


My Demons Play Well With Yours

by Only_1_Truth



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: 00Q Festival 2017, Alternate Universe - Demons, BAMF M, BAMF Q, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Complete, Danger Kink, During Skyfall, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Not everyone is a demon but everyone knows they exist, Rough Sex, Slightly canon compliant if canon had a demon tossed into it, demon!Q, flagrant misuse of curses plagues and other demonic capacities, slightly offensive religious jokes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-08-09
Packaged: 2018-12-07 16:15:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11627193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Only_1_Truth/pseuds/Only_1_Truth
Summary: In the wake of the attack on MI6, M is ordered to clean house and strengthen her organization - so she goes and hires a demon.  Demons are territorial, possessive, and this one also has some impressive technological skills.  Many people in MI6 are against it.  Ademonfor a Quartermaster??  Those opposed have one hope: James Bond.  007 has killed demons before - even a Duke of Hell.  And now he's coming home...No one is sure what will happen, but one thing is for sure: MI6 is about to become a hellishly interesting place...





	1. Selcouth

**Author's Note:**

> Selcouth: (adj.) unfamiliar, rare, strange, yet marvelous
> 
> This might be one of the most enjoyable fics I've ever written - don't be mislead by the serious tags, it's actually quite a fun ride. I mean, you didn't think James and demon!Q would meet up without some hilarious shenanigans ensuing, did you? *evil laughter fades away into the fic*

When MI6 was leveled and many of its employees killed, everyone held M responsible for the security breach and demanded that she do something to make a better, stronger, more fortified MI6.  They effectively told her to ‘fix up this mess’ by any means within her power, the breadth of which had been vastly diminished, especially since her best agent had been declared dead just a week before.  

Apparently ‘any means within her power’ did not extend to hiring a demon to run Q-branch.  

To be fair, demons were a little understood commodity in the UK and the world at large.  They _did_ exist - most everyone granted that - but their appearances were rare and generally surrounded by a great deal of pandemonium and hysteria.  To say the least, they were heralds of great trouble.  M assured the board, however, that her demon was something less chaotic than a Duke of Hell, and that she trusted in his professionalism completely.  She also pointed out that, considering the circumstances, a demon was the best candidate that they could hope for.  Besides being as cunning as the agents that MI6 trained and employed, demons were fiercely possessive and even territorial creatures, and what better at a time like this than an entity that wanted nothing more than to defend its new home turf?  A demon’s ability to weave lies was also reflected by its ability to detect them, and M pointed out that perhaps this whole debacle could have been prevented in the first place if they’d had the demon _before_ MI6 headquarters was destroyed - because maybe a demon would have detected the serpent in their midst before everything devolved into bombs.  After all, it wasn’t like those circumstances had set themselves up by magic.  A mole or two had been necessary in Silva’s plans, and demons could sense deceit just like one predator knew the look of another.

Her new Quartermaster in particular, M defended, was rare in that he also enjoyed technology, so viruses and cyber-attacks were his bread and butter, so to speak.  

The board, of course, continued to protest.  That was when M pulled out her trump card: “You actually already approved him.”

The board declared that they most certainly had not approved a demon to work at the heart of the Queen’s Secret Service.  

M merely produced a slim folder and opened it, sliding a crisply printed file describing one Siger Q. Holmes, inventor, programmer, and with multiple degrees in engineering besides - all next to an unassuming picture of a bespectacled, dark-haired young man whose only negative attribute appeared to be his youthful features (although his date of birth was marked 1980, making him in his thirties).  

“I believe that on the final page in that file you’ll see all of your signatures, approving him as Quartermaster of MI6,” M stated, her posture proud and her expression archly serene as she, with a bit of honestly demonic skill herself, closed the trap around those who would try and stymie her efforts.  “As there was no category on the form under which to put ‘demon,’ I didn’t consider it relevant - not when you were willing to overlook so much else about this candidate in order to hire him.”  Guilty eyes looked away, wordlessly admitting that they knew that the page beneath that faintly smiling picture was a criminal record - long and varied, but not as long as the words that recommended him.  

Her victory driven home with the same precise force of a rapier, M stood, put on an entirely false smile with no real attempt at friendliness, and said, “Good day, gentlemen.  I have a Quartermaster to install.”

~^~

The board wasn’t the only group who withheld their applause when the new Quartermaster was hired - there was quite a lot of upset to be found in MI6.  Some, admittedly, were probably paid off by those very board members to try and remove the demon of MI6, not knowing that within a week of his installment Q would become known through the whole organization in capital letters - the Demon of MI6 - not for his vertical pupils or long, whiplike tail, but for the ruthless way in which he took opposition and met it with some of his own.  

Firings were rife in that first week as Q rooted out turncoats at every turn, and those who could not be trusted with their postings at MI6.  People protested that he was misusing the power of his position to merely remove anyone who didn’t like him, but when Q began exercising not only his lie-detecting skills but his far more human technological ones, finding evidence that these people had assisted in the fall of the last MI6, those protests died down significantly.  Q never fired anyone without proof that they were traitors.  What’s more, Q fired people rather _pleasantly_.  He always smiled his droll smile, standing politely while security came with the handcuffs, barely batting an eye as he was verbally abused by the moles he’d caught.  

Actually, on at least one occasion, the Quartermaster was seen to step forward, long tail strung out behind him like a sable ribbon, and pat the perpetrator on the head.  Those close enough heard him whisper as he leaned in close, “Nice try, but trying to outfox a demon is an exercise in futility.  I’ve been playing this game quite a bit longer than you.  Ta.”

It was a simple fact that was soon accepted by all, that anyone who’d been party to the recent disaster would be found out and summarily incarcerated.  M backed up every order that Q made, trusting that he’d eventually find proof of betrayal beyond his demonic skills, although it was suspected that she’d give him free reign even if he didn’t.  Either way, the backstabbers that had slipped into MI6’s bosom over the years definitely believed in Q’s uncanny skills, because many of them made a run for it without warning.  Then they became the double-oh programme’s problem, so while MI6 began to rebuild, agents chased down the last purged miscreants.  Not all of them were even directly related to the most recent incident, but traitors were traitors, and MI6 was wiping them all out.

Despite what many had said about Q removing any who opposed him, that still left quite a few malcontents.  In fact, said malcontents only got bolder about their dislike once things settled down and the witch-hunt ended.  “He’s dangerous - he’s a demon, for god’s sake,” was at least one complaint that ended up right in M’s office.  Frequently.

Q, also in M’s office on one occasion, lifted an elegant finger and interjected, “I’m not sure that ‘god’s sake’ really has anything to do with it.”  He smiled politely when the plaintiff rounded on him, red-faced with fury.  Still speaking as mildly as a lamb, Q finished, “And in case you haven’t noticed, productivity in my branch has increased tenfold - whereas I’ve heard rumors that Accounting is decidedly less efficient.  Of course, who listens to rumors?”

That complaint (coming from the head of Accounting), like many others, came to nothing.  

Some arguments did come to something, however - in fact, those that avoided M were the nastiest confrontations, just as deals made beneath the table were the shadiest.  The Psych department in particular developed a vendetta against having a demonic presence in Q-branch, but took great pains to never deserve a formal reprimand even as they made their displeasure known in lesser ways: sly comments in passing, borderline sarcastic wording in any inter-branch emails, creating new and discriminatory protocols for the evaluation of Q-branch members with increasingly frequent psych-evals, basing it on the fact that they were working with a demonic entity.  By the time the rudeness reached a peak, Q-branch itself had actually become quite accepting of their boss, realizing that when he wasn’t acting as M’s scent-hound he was actually amazingly skilled with computers and tech and not a bad fellow altogether.  Unless riled, he was actually quite friendly, so long as sacrifices (cups of Earl Grey tea) were presented regularly at whatever altar (desk) he was reigning over (working at) presently.  

But then came the day when Psych went too far.  

MI6 was finally working at something resembling its previous efficiency, still limping at times as it adjusted to new people and a new home-base.  The last vigorous round of mandatory psych-evals had hit Q-branch hard, however, and Q exited his office that morning with no less than ten reports of ‘psychological instability’ in his hands, all of them with notes demanding that these people be ‘removed from their present positions for the safety of themselves and those around them.’  One of the people on that list was actually Q’s second-in-command, R, who’d worked under the old Quartermaster and had come around to be one of Q’s strongest supporters.  

Q read the reports with a mieu of disapproval on his face, his tail (which had a habit of moving unconsciously, people knew by now) flicking sharply back and forth.  All of Q’s underlings instinctively moved around said tail without thinking.  When it turned out that copies of those reports had also been sent to the people _in_ said reports, bypassing Q entirely and taking the initiative of giving those people their ten-days notice, Q’s eyes merely narrowed.  

He reassured everyone that there would be no firing without his signature, rather gleefully shredded the papers, and then exited Q-branch as regally as a Siamese cat.  

He was so calm that it was like watching the fires of hell itself stand still.  Or perhaps like watching a fireball crash to earth in perfect, eerie silence.  No one knew quite what to make of it, but no one in Q-branch dared say another word on the subject.  

Of course, the next day, scrawled on the walls of the Pscyh department’s personal lounge was written in dripping, incarnadined, but remarkably artful script, ‘ _Kindly remember that it is protocol for all heads of branches to approve the removal of their employees. Your particular brand of charientism I do not find amusing_.’  On the opposite wall, also written in what looked worrisomely like blood, was a blunter message, ‘ _Cease harassing my minions or I’ll end you. Thanks_.’  So far as inter-branch reminders went, it certainly made a strong impression.  At least one woman fainted.  

The blood, it turned out, was chicken-blood, and besides the hysterical verbal accusations from Psych, nothing could connect the vandalism to the Demon of MI6.  The handwriting didn’t match his, for starters.  And after all, that message could have referred to any branch, couldn’t it?  And who would tolerate being called ‘minions’?  Surely not the proud denizens of Q-branch.  

Q’s minions confirmed their master’s innocence all the way.  

~^~

007’s return from death marked the true rebirth of MI6, and for the demon-haters of MI6, it signaled a renewed hope - James Bond was one of the few people in all of Britain who could claim to have seen, faced, and killed a demon.  Those against M’s new Quartermaster cheered, an ally in sight.  Even discounting 007’s straightforward history of interspecies deadliness, there was the promising fact that demons weren’t the only ones known for their territorialism - Bond was defensive, too, and everyone knew that having two alpha dogs in one pit tended to create a fight that only one walked away from happy.  Bets were placed on Q not leaving that fight _at all_.  So far, Q had gained a reputation as a fierce but generally non-violent opponent, after all.  Many of his opposition found bloody writing on their walls, locusts in their desk-drawers, or computer wires that turned inexplicably into snakes, but no actual violence was ever perpetrated.  Of course, the most egregious curses that Q leveled against anyone always seemed to disappear shortly before evidence could be collected or charges leveled, and if anyone tried to take pictures of the hellish situation, their phones always malfunctioned.  Perhaps Q didn’t have the rank or power to make a deal with the devil, but it was heavily suspected that he’d made some sort of unholy pact with all technology and at least ninety-percent of the office stationary.  

Point being, however, Q had yet to inflict bodily harm, so if pitted against an agent _known_ for his skill in doing just that, the odds were not in Q’s favor.  

That, and it was very hard to imagine a bespectacled young man (demon) who was ten-stone soaking wet and always dressed in cardigans capable of any sort of fighting at all - even if he had a prehensile tail of nearly three meters.  

So the day that Bond was declared among the living once more, everyone in MI6 held their breaths.  They watched as Bond strolled in, as certain of himself as a summer storm and with that self-same lightning in his pale-blue eyes, and a fairly impressive amount of money changed hands as everyone noted 007’s rough looks but his steady gait.  Clearly, the rumors about him coming back unsound were greatly exaggerated.   

Unfortunately, the hopes that he’d come like an avenging angel and slay the Demon of MI6 were also clearly all in vain: it took less than three minutes for Bond to take a fast shine to the new Quartermaster, tail and all.  

~^~

Bond had seen two demons in his lifetime, and killed one.  The other he recalled in bits and horrific snatches, massive wings and curled horns all wreathed in smoke that not only curled out of its mouth but rose from the gutted shell that had once been Skyfall Lodge.  It was a shattered memory, as cold and lacking in color as ash, and 007 had ceased to carry any anger over it years ago - if anything, he looked back on that memory with a sort of detached awe, the new-found predator in himself seeing something similar and taking notes.  The past was the past, and in the present, James was a 00-agent badass enough to kill a Duke of Hell, so his opinion was that the only people that hated demons were those who feared them.

007 didn’t fear Q at all.  In fact, he found him rather _cute_.

The new Quartermaster had really done quite a good job of making himself unthreatening and unassuming; the wardrobe alone was about as disarming as one could get.  From what Bond knew of demons, the more human they looked, the lower they were in the ranks, so even without his professorial glasses or eccentric garb, it was entirely possible that Q was not actually dangerous - at least, on 007’s admittedly warped scale.  True, 007’s natural sense for danger pinged quietly in the back of his mind the moment he entered Q-branch, but he’d have been dead bored if it hadn’t.  

Bond was entirely sure that his footsteps were silent, but as he snuck up on Q, he watched the man’s posture with interest.  Slim and lean, of a height with James himself, Q was at a standing console with his hands moving in a spider-light dance.  His tail swept in slow undulations behind him, stroking desks and chairs like a cat’s long whiskers, so as he got closer, Bond timed his arrival so as to just miss it until the relaxed back-swing bumped up against James’s knee.  Everyone in Q-branch tensed and gasped and prepared for the expected catfight, but Bond merely put on his most charming smile as the Quartermaster immediately spun to see him.  

Behind his glasses, razor-keen eyes with a cat-like pupil looked over Bond from head to toe in a swift, sharp sweep like someone frisking for weapons.  Bond weathered the look because it gave him a chance to truly appreciate the beauty of those eyes - 007 had seen eyes of all sorts, from the dull to the truly beautiful, but Q’s were heterochromic with the most enchanting threads of gold-brown woven through a verdant wash of green.  The vertical slash of pupil just made them all the more exotic.  “007,” Q greeted, his own face relaxing into a smile so practiced that Bond had to marvel at it a bit, one trickster nodding approvingly to another.  Q’s voice was also a pleasant, mild tenor that Bond wanted to _do_ things with.  “How nice to finally meet you.  May I congratulate you on your continued living?”

Still aware - and still ignoring - the dinner-plate stares all around them, Bond nodded like the gentleman he most certainly was not, “You may.”

“May I also ask how there are…”  Q turned his back again and clicked a few things on his computer, presumably Bond’s file, as his eyebrows rose and he went on in a slightly surprised voice, “...Eight death certificates in your file?  This being the ninth?”

Stepping forward to look over Q’s shoulder (not because he was interested in reading his own file, but because it meant Q’s tail had to slide heavily past both of his legs if it wanted to move), Bond waited a beat and then reposted with offhanded joviality, “The Reaper came for me.  I drank him under the table and then left.  I’m sure he’ll find me later.”  Bond grinned.  “I think it’s safe to say that we’re drinking buddies now.”

It looked like Q tried to stop the smile, but his eyes danced and the corners of his mouth twitched, betraying him.  “How charming,” he said, and Bond had to inwardly nod once again at how perfectly the Quartermaster maintained the off-hand tone.  “Now tell me, did you come down here for a reason, or just to get in my way?  I don’t have any order forms for you here.”

Pretending to scan the computer screen, Bond leaned forward enough to brace a hand on the desk next to Q’s.  He’d been warned about crossing interpersonal, professional boundaries at least a million times - what was once more?  “I just came to see MI6’s newest member.”

“And threaten me, no doubt?”  Q sounded only the slightest bit tense, his playful tone getting crisp at the edges.  But he didn’t back away or stop working, Bond’s file disappearing to be replaced by a half-dozen other active windows.  “I’ve a terrible temper, I should warn you.”

“Really?” Bond pretended to be surprised.  “Well, then, by all means, tell me when I’m crossing it.”

One alien, hazel eyes flicked James’s way, as curious as the proverbial cat but, Bond suspected, decidedly more dangerous.  That warning was still going off in the back of Bond’s head, but it was like a song he knew well - one that he liked to dance to, in fact, as he knew _all_ the steps.  He hadn’t had this much fun since before Moneypenny had shot him off that train.  “You’d like me to draw a line in the sand so that you could merrily skip along it, wouldn’t you?” Q guessed with a sardonic little quirk to his lips.  

Bond flashed a grin that spread from ear to ear and lit his eyes like the merriest fires of Hell - he didn’t need to be a native to know some of the tricks of the trade.  “That’s precisely what I want, little demon.”

~^~

All of the opponents to M’s hiring choices _groaned_ when they realized that instead of finding a nemesis in Bond, Q was now thick as thieves with him.  Technically, 007 wasn’t cleared for fieldwork yet, so he spent a lot of time in MI6 getting re-trained and re-certified, and managed to spend seemingly every waking moment in between lollygagging around Q-branch - and watching its Quartermaster like a particularly enamored guarddog.  Previously, some of the discourteousness shown to Q went unpunished because Q was simply too busy to take notice, but now he had a second set of eyes - blue as glacier ice and as keen as the laser-sight on a sniper-rifle.  It would be incorrect to say that Bond guarded Q in any way, but Bond's presence alone was definitely a deterrent to the more cowardly demon-haters still in MI6. .  

Bond himself had no shame - but also no conscience that anyone could detect.  When people were brave enough to disrespect Q while he was around to see it, 007… did nothing.  But when the miscreant came to work the next day and had spiders pour out of their desk, Bond approached Q and settled lazily against the table next to him.  Pretending to watch the room while Q watched his computer, the agent asked with the faintest hint of a smile, “You could have done worse to that one, you know.”

Q’s eyes never left his work, flicking back and forth across his screen, designing a virus that would be like the seven plagues upon whatever firewall he tested it on.  “I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about, 007,” he murmured.  

“You’re a beautiful liar.”

“I _still_ have no idea what you’re talking about.  But thank you.”

~^~

The next time there was something written in blood, it was actually on the refrigerator for the common kitchens, and fell more into the category of helpful than punishing: ‘ _The yogurt within expired 3 years ago. What do you think we should do with it_?’  The sarcasm was somehow transmitted perfectly.  This time, M was petitioned to have her ‘pet demon’ put on probation, but once again, M pointed out that there was nothing but circumstantial evidence that indicated Q had been the one to do this.  None of the security cameras had spotted anyone visiting the scene of the crime, in fact, so M did take Q into her office to discuss the potentially dangerous blind-spots in MI6 security.  He promised to get right on that.  

Bond, fresh off the treadmill and dressed in jogging pants and a sweat-damp tee, was soon after padding into Q-branch with a mildly interested look on his face again.  By this point, Q’s minions had taken to ignoring him, accepting him as another piece of their environment - not unlike Q’s semi-sentient tail.  Q was sitting down for once, signing paperwork by hand with a sort of flourish that indicated he sometimes enjoyed the solidity of pen and ink over computers and wires, which made Bond think about the other demon he’d crossed paths with.  That demon had had wings and a penchant for signing away people’s souls.  Bond would have liked to say that that was the most unbelievable thing he’d ever seen in his tenure at MI6, but that would have been a lie.  

And not even a very interesting lie.  

 _Q_ was the one with interesting lies.  

“I thought you were allergic to paperwork,” Q spoke first this time, voice light but attention never leaving his task.  

Bond watched the steady sweeps and jerks of Q’s pen for a few moments more before ignoring Q’s words to comment instead, “You’re right-handed.”

“Well-spotted.”

“Hmm.”

Now Q glanced up, eyebrows disappearing up under his fall of hair as he fixed Bond with a deceptively mild look over his glasses.  “Do you have something to add, 007?”

“Oh, nothing, only that I happened to meet someone once who was ambidextrous, and they could write equally well with boths hands, but the handwriting was different,” James said carelessly, “It would make it very hard to compare handwriting samples - it would be like two different people writing.”

Q’s mouth didn’t twitch this time, but his eyes narrowed fractionally, and for a split-second, Bond thought he saw Q’s oblong pupils dilate.  Excitement or fear?  A response to a threat?  Or arousal?  But then he began speaking with smooth dryness like the finest of sand sifted through a dexterous hand, “That is a most marvelous story, 007, but I fail to see where you are going with it.”

Where Bond was going with it depended entirely on what steps his partner took, in this dance where the lead and follow changed with the tune.  Bending at the waist to lean his forearms on Q’s desk, Bond smiled mischievously and let his left hand skim over Q’s papers as he spoke - he didn’t touch or unsettle anything, but without warning his hand did drift over and deftly pluck Q’s pen from his unexpecting fingers.  “I think that you’re ambidextrous,” he accused bluntly but in an eminently pleasant tone, even as he continued to ride along the wave of the element of surprise by popping the pen back into place - but in Q’s other hand.  James grinned with wolfish triumph as he saw the spasm go through Q’s left hand in surprise, a millisecond before the Quartermaster’s fingers closed around the utensil reflexively.  The grip was sudden and startled, but held not an ounce of awkwardness - an easy grip in a supposedly non-dominant hand.  Bond flicked his eyes up to meet Q’s, happy as a clam whereas the Demon of MI6 was giving him a stiff, shuttered look.  Bond felt something tapping against his ankles, which turned out to be Q’s long tail swishing angrily back and forth from beneath the table.  

When Bond spoke again, it was quiet - just as his previous sentence had been, so that no one else shared in his discovery - and he said, “Of course, I don’t have as speck of proof.”

Now Q flashed an instant smile, eyes sparking with it.  “What a pity.  I’m sure that you would have been an absolute nuisance if you did.”

Leaning a little closer and folding his arms like a lion’s lazy paws upon his prey that was Q’s forgotten paperwork, Bond said from inches away from the Quartermaster’s unfazed face, the two of them wearing mirrored, troublemaker’s smiles, “Who says I won’t be?”

~^~

After that, everyone started taking bets on when someone would catch Bond and Q shagging.  There was a still a stubborn populace who was betting on the whole affair ending in blood, and then a subdivision that was actually laying bets on _both_.  007 was getting closer and closer to mission-ready condition, but he still had at least a week before he was cleared for active duty - a week that he spent being almost constantly underfoot in Q-branch, every spare second between training and increasingly frustrating psych-evals finding him there.  

However, if everyone was expecting some sort of swift and possibly ruthless mating ritual between two predators, they were sorely mistaken - they saw the twisted courting of two tricksters instead.  

Bond was incorrigible and Q was unrepentant.  By this point, it was an open secret that Q was the undisputed blood-writer plaguing all of the idiots of MI6 - sometimes he did the deed in retaliation to bitterness against his branch, sometimes he used it as a sick and twisted teaching tool.  ‘ _Stop having sex in the lounge. The couches are going to get STIs_ ’ had even been printed in ruby red on the break-room specifically assigned to agents.  M claimed to be too busy running MI6 to worry about every little thing, and had long since refused to entertain complaints about these notes - so long as they got cleaned up (Q-branch had already engineered a chemical ten times more effective at removing blood than anything currently on the market) and so long as the blood was never human (which perhaps went to show how long M had been running this circus, like a mother on her fourth child and resigned to the fact that they were going to eat dirt, but so long as they didn’t eat the _worms_ , it was fine).  

Eve and Tanner decided to take up the mantle of lawgivers, and did their best to curb the new Quartermaster’s demonic ways.  It was a completely benevolent mission, which was perhaps why it failed.

Two things prevented them from making much headway.  One: just as stinging was in the nature of a scorpion, so was lying and committing mayhem in the nature of a demon, even one as mild-mannered and unassuming as Q.  And so long as he never admitted to his crimes and _certainly_ never got caught in a lie (much less on camera, as any and all tech in all of MI6 was his to command), it was very hard to get any leverage to use against him.  

As if that weren’t frustrating enough, there was factor number two: James-that-smug-bastard-Bond.  He rather liked Q’s snarkily impish side, and encouraged bloodthirsty tendencies at every opportunity.  The first time was hardly the last time that Bond asked not, “Why do you keep doing this, Q?” but instead asked, “Why don’t you do _worse_?”

“You seem quite preoccupied with the disappointing level of violence in my alleged actions,” Q eventually commented while striding back and forth between projects - one being a pocket-sized dart-gun and the other being a full-sized Aston Martin.  James had been looking at both with equal levels of covetousness ever since he’d strode in there, dressed up in a bespoke Armani suit and most definitely late for his appointment with Psych.  To be fair, if the psychiatrist wanted him, everyone with two brain cells knew that 007 could be found in Q-branch - but apparently the psychiatrist didn’t want him that badly.  

Instead of answering, Bond just continued to sprawl in the metal chair he’d liberated from a nearby minion’s desk and watched the whip-smooth trail of Q’s tail as it swayed with a life of its own in Q’s wake.  The boffin moved between his two projects as his whims took him, although James seemed to take shameless pleasure in the times Q’s whims had him bent over the engine of the car.  All of the Q-branch underlings had cleared the immediate area for their own safety as James and Q verbally sparred, but those near enough to see Bond’s leer took a moment to roll their eyes before wisely returning to work.  When the tip of Q’s tail flicked at Bond’s calf, however, the 00-agent finally deigned to respond verbally, even if he still dodged the topic, “Q, what rank of demon did you say you were again?”

Q glanced up mildly from his work, blinked twice with his beautifully heterochromic eyes, and then shrugged, “I didn’t.”

Bond nudged his toe against the long tail that still stretched towards him as if to keep track of his position while Q’s back was turned.  “I think I heard someone in Psych lamenting the day M ‘invited a Duke of Hell into MI6’s hallowed walls’,” 007 tipped his head back and recalled.  

In reply, Q snorted, already elbows-deep under the hood of the Aston Martin again.  “Firstly - that’s terribly melodramatic - and secondly-”  The Quartermaster got up, rubbing oil-stains from his slender hands onto the apron he was wearing for the day, and took a moment to look pleased with his work before turning that pleasant expression on Bond.  It was a ‘butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth’ sort of smile.  “-I’m really more on level with a Knight.  So many people are misinformed, but the higher up the ranks my kind go, the more… assets we have.”  Q helpfully indicated his tail and eyes, the only demonic traits he carried, although he carried them quite unapologetically within the confines of MI6’s apparently _hallowed_ walls.  

“Actually, I do know a thing or two about demonic ranks,” 007 countered, settling one arm on the desk next to him and propping his jaw against the backs of his knuckles, alert blue eyes never leaving Q.  

“Then you know that a Duke of Hell would surely have wings, at the very least.”

Bond nodded and made an agreeable humming noise, but something excited and expectant remained in his eyes, as if he didn’t believe his own answer for a second - and Q’s words even less.  

He allowed another topic-change, however, when Q strode past him to the table strewn with tiny bits of wiring and tubing that would hopefully soon belong to his second project, saying, “What so many people fail to realize is that I’m really something of a minor demon.  All those nasty hellish creatures that occasionally make the news for springing up and wreaking havoc are way above my pay-grade, and there are strict rules above us playing above our station.”

Swiveling his head to keep track of Q just as Q had been keeping tabs on him earlier by touch, 007 replied back with real interest, “Really?”

That prompted more explanation, and the conversation continued to roll along smoothly, as if they were lifelong friends instead of a trained assassin-spy and a minor demon.  “Oh yes.  In fact, everything is strictly regulated.  If a minor demon like myself were to get up to anything beyond trivial mischief, I dare say that one of the higher-ups would come by with a spray-bottle of holy-water to punish me for my hubris.”

Q said that with such a straight face that James couldn’t help but bark out a laugh.  “That sounds absolutely dreadful,” he played along, pretending to be aghast but fairly certain now that Q was playing with him.

“It truly is,” Q concurred without missing a beat, and possibly would have continued his talk about the appropriate actions and punishments related to the demon caste system, had not James grinned wickedly and slowly, and reached out the snag the Quartermaster’s tail on its next pass against his knees.  The Demon of MI6 hadn’t been watching him well enough, and now he was going to pay for it - and demons weren’t the only ones who liked to play with people.  Q jumped about a foot and spun, and for a split second, James saw pointed canine teeth when Q bared them at him in surprised outrage.  Q regained himself quickly, with all the poise of a cat recovering from an embarrassing stumble, but Bond just watched him all the while with an imperturbable, shit-eating grin on his face and his hand firmly curled around its prize.  

“You were saying, Q?” Bond purred as the Quartermaster’s sleek tail twitched impotently in his grip.  

Q’s eyes narrowed, and his voice got neither louder nor deeper, but somehow slipped into a subtly more warning octave as he switched topics without preamble, “You like to play with fire, don’t you, 007?”

The tip of Q’s tail was still well and truly trapped, but the rest of it continued to undulate and tug.  Bond, utterly unperturbed by this, replied with his smile still lighting his eyes like blue hellish fire, “So my therapists tell me.”  He cocked his head, the glint in his eyes somehow getting even more impish, “I think I just like playing with _you_.”

“You might find that those two are one and the same.  If you want to play with fire, I have a few corners of _Hell_ to recommend.”

Bond just canted his head at the threat and countered, “What if I just want to play with something _hot_?”  The way his eyes lingered was very suggestive, and more than a few eyebrows that hadn’t jumped up yet in Q-branch winged swiftly heavenward.  

Q’s brows, on the other hand, drew together even more strongly above his slitted eyes.  “You, 007, deserve to have ‘shameless’ tattooed on your forehead.”  

Q’s tail continued to jerk and twitch, but Bond’s grip on it just below the tip was proving unbreakable.  As if realizing this on some muscular level, Q’s tail stopped its spasmodic pulling and instead began casting unconscious loops over Bond’s knuckles and wrist, like a snake with its head trapped.  Bond definitely hadn’t gotten the memo that this should have disturbed him.  “Would you love me any other way?” he teased back with all of his considerable, infuriating charm.  

This time it was Q who paused and cocked his head, and for a moment, perhaps his catlike pupils dilated.  “No, perhaps not,” was his suddenly thoughtful answer.  Then he firmed up his expression again and straightened his spine, just barely managing to look professional while his long, trapped tail tried to squeeze at Bond’s hand and loose itself without avail.  “That does not, however, mean that I will tolerate you pulling on my tail.  Kindly let go, 007.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to see some of the most fabulous fanart, [AmeresLare](http://archiveofourown.org/users/AmeresLare) drew up the 'tail-pulling' scene AND I LOVE IT *tries to hug the artist right through the screen* Find the fanart [here](http://amereslare.tumblr.com/post/163564369976/for-my-demons-play-well-with-yours-an-amazing-fic).


	2. Kalon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In that moment, Bond wasn’t sure what he wanted more: to pit his skills against Q until one of them ended up bloody on the floor, or to drag him in and kiss him until he found out how sharp those little demonic teeth were against his tongue._
> 
> Or the chapter in which the tail-pulling continues, but then things escalate...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kalon: (n) beauty that is more than skin deep

The tail-pulling became a regular thing, and it clearly drove Q crazy - which was probably why Bond fixated on it.  Of course, Q’s professionalism was a nigh-impenetrable wall, but this new habit of 007’s had a way of drilling holes in those defenses, and people began betting again on 007 and Q devolving into a fight to the death.  There were still those who were holding onto the hope of perhaps catching Bond and Q snogging in a closet somewhere (or, better yet, shagging in public where it could be seen), but with Bond pushing his luck more and more, the first option now seemed more likely.  

“Bond, when you were young, didn’t your mother tell you not to pull a cat’s tail?” Q asked with an almost inaudible growl in his tone, as he tried to focus on coding.  

James, who had once again proven his ability to sneak up on anyone and anything, sat on the desk behind Q and gave a playful squeeze to the tail he’d caught.  The squeeze made Q’s shoulders hunch for a second in surprise, and Bond grinned at the proof that he’d gotten under his Quartermaster’s skin.  “She might have.  But it was a lesson I learned so long ago that I can’t properly remember it,” he said with perfectly feigned innocence.

“Of course you can’t,” Q sighed with resignation and punched a few more keys.  When he swiveled his head to look over his shoulder at Bond, his hazel eyes were narrowed and his lips pursed into a flat, unamused line, but it didn’t dim 007’s smirk in the slightest.  If anything, it ignited the glinting light of challenge in Bond’s eyes, the ‘I like to play with fire, remember?’ look.  “How long again before you get released for active field duty?” Q demanded suddenly.  

“Why, Q, you sound almost as though you’re getting sick of me.”

“How perspicacious of you, 007,” Q deadpanned.

Instead of being hurt by that, Bond softened his tone to something almost gentle, tilted his head, and said knowingly, “You’ll get bored without me.”

That got Q’s hands to stop moving, and for a moment he was entirely still; even his tail stopped its perpetual escape attempts, and Bond in return eased his grip on it.  He didn’t let it go, of course, but it felt a tiny bit like a compromise, even as the hand-span of tail protruding from Bond’s fist moved to wind around his wrist-bones.  After a moment, seemingly lost in thought, Q turned completely until he could lean back against his workstation and cross his arms, blinking at Bond unreadably.  

It was Bond who broke the silence, although he never shied away from the stare.  His voice was measured, almost respectful, and anyone near enough to sense the change in temperament was mystified - because up until now, it had seemed that Bond and Q existed in a constant atmosphere of foreplay and/or antagonism.  Yet now the two became serious without any indication that it felt strange.  “Hopefully by the end of the week I’ll be let loose to track down the person who blew up MI6 headquarters.”

“ ‘Let loose’?  You sound like a hunting hound.”

“Aren’t I?”

Q made a pondering noise in response to the question, and then turned around again, but only to tap a few keys and ostensibly close up what he was doing.  Then he turned as if to walk away, his tail giving a little tug as if it were a leash attached to Bond rather than one of his appendages trapped in the agent’s hand.  “Come along, 007.  I might have something for you, if you are indeed going to go hunting.  If you’re to be a hound for MI6, then the least I can do is make you a Hellhound.”

Intrigued, 007 pushed to his feet and followed without hesitation.  If it looked vaguely adorable and unsettling at the same time to see a 00-agent trailing after a demon, lead by said demon’s tail, then at least everyone had enough self-preservation instinct not to comment.  In this fashion, Q led Bond through the warren of Q-branch, eventually leaving everyone else behind and continuing on into the catacombs that hadn’t been completely refurbished yet.  By this point, Bond had let go, but still had a bracelet of tail around his forearm, as if Q had forgotten it there in favor of recollecting the right twists and turns.  It only uncoiled and slithered away when they reached their destination.  

“Do you have your Walther on you, 007?” Q asked suddenly, as he flicked on the light to an otherwise unadorned room.  It was a foreboding sort of location, poorly lit even after the electricity was turned on, but 007 had been in literal underground lairs, so after a brief glance to accustom himself to the room's three doors (possible exits) and outdated lighting system, he turned his idle focus back to Q.  By way of answer, he used his free hand to pull back the edges of his suit-jacket, revealing his gun holstered snugly against his ribs.  

“Loaded?”

“Officially, I’m not supposed to keep it loaded within the confines of MI6,” Bond replied by rote.

Q’s mobile mouth curled in a narrow-eyed smile.  “Unofficially, do you have a bullet or two?”

Angling his hand so that he could stroke his fingertips against the length of tail still hovering within reach, enjoying the warm suede feel and the agile twitch in response, Bond again answered nonverbally by unholstering the weapon and ejecting the full clip in economical, practiced motions.  Q extended a hand, taking just one bullet before allowing Bond to have the rest back.  Only then seeming to realize that his tail was free (standing closer to Bond allowed him to turn and stare at the appendage in apparent befuddlement), Q frowned and whipped his tail back behind him until it was once again making sinuous sweeps behind him.  Bond swallowed a chuckle and stood his ground, hands going into his pockets as he settled his weight and watched to see what the Demon of MI6 was about to do.  

“Everyone tells stories about having things blessed by priests, by God, or by angels and the like,” Q muttered as he walked away, raising his voice so that it carried back to 007.  He sounded a bit like a disgruntled professor, enough so that Bond couldn’t hide a smirk this time.  Q’s back was turned, so he didn’t notice.  He’d removed his shoes and socks and now seemed to be eyeing the bullet he’d taken as if it held all the secrets in the world.  Then he stopped suddenly, and with the air of someone waking up with a realization, turned back to Bond to ask, “Do you also happen to have a knife on you?  I can cope without one, but would really rather not.”

Part of Bond grew slightly uneasy, and the other half was listening to the musical chiming of warning bells in his head, the familiar tune that told him time and time again not only that he was in danger, but that he was _alive_.  The dead didn’t feel that fizzing spark of fear, and Bond let the taste of it float like champagne on the back of his tongue even as he reached down, pulled up his trouser leg, and removed a butterfly knife from an ankle-sheath.  “You going to tell me what you’re up to any time soon, little demon?” he intoned with carefully measured curiosity.  His eyes watched Q, keen and canny - one predator enchanted with another.  

Q just smiled enigmatically.  “What would be the fun in that? Besides-” he added, as he once again approached Bond, close enough that Bond could have reached out and touched him - or cut him, the knife a familiar weight in his calloused hands.  Since Bond knew for a fact that all demons had a very strong survival instinct, and incredible senses for danger, Q had to know that as well as Bond did, yet the bespectacled young man extended his hand anyway, a vulnerable palm asking tacitly for the weapon.  “-I thought you liked a bit of intrigue?”  

The grin seemed to widen magically across the 00-agent’s face.  “How do you always know just what to say?” Bond asked with all of his charm as he dropped the knife onto Q’s palm, not giving it another thought.  Of course, if the blade came out, that was a whole different story - but James liked to play fast and loose with his own life.  And this game with Q kept paying dividends.  In that moment, Bond wasn’t sure what he wanted more: to pit his skills against Q until one of them ended up bloody on the floor, or to drag him in and kiss him until he found out how sharp those little demonic teeth were against his tongue.  

Neither eventuality occurred, at least not immediately, so James settled his weight evenly between his feet and contented himself with waiting and watching as Q strode away again.  Only once he was in the center of the room did Q flip the knife open, taking mere seconds to become comfortable with it, and then suddenly brought his tail around and opened up a quick but purposeful gash along the last hand-span of the appendage.  Q grimaced, hissing in a breath of pain, and 007 narrowed his eyes in a wary frown, but by then, Q was putting the knife away.  “If it’s not already clear,” Q turned back to Bond to say, with a lopsided smile and a droll tone, “What I’m about to do isn’t strictly kosher.  Sometimes, computers and software will do the job, but there are days when the old techniques just can’t be beaten.”  Releasing a sigh that was either nostalgic for the old days or lamenting the limitations of the present, Q swept his lacerated tail out in a wide arc, and James stepped back smartly as that single gesture spattered an impressive arc of blood, quickly painting an eerily perfect circle with Q at its center.  

It was fascinating and unsettling all at once to watch.  Q continue to sketch patterns with the redness dripping from the end of his tail, creating something that was at once artistic and rigidly geometric, making Bond think of what little he’d seen of the Quartermaster’s coding.  Regularly, Q balanced on the knife’s edge between stone-cold logic and utter chaos.  All the while, Q seemed almost lackadaisical about the whole thing, his eyes presently half-lidded, stepping here and there, his tail sweeping in bloody, negligent coils behind him that somehow always made a perfect design.  It was almost something that should have been set to music, but all there was to listen to was the soft shuffle of Q’s bare feet and the spattering of more blood than Bond had ever seen _willingly_ spilled.  

It shouldn’t have been beautiful, but it was, in the way that the perfect whistle of a sniper’s bullet was beautiful as it sang through the air.  

“I don’t do this very often, so you should count yourself lucky,” Q cautioned, stroking a ruler-perfect line from one section of the circle to another, eyes on his work.  

Bond held his position outside the circle and leaned against the wall with a smile.  “Is that just a nice way of saying ‘You owe me one’?”

“Come now, 007,” Q chided, and though he remained focused on painting out the minor details of his design in blood, Bond thought he caught a smile before Q’s back turned to him, “You say that you’ve dealt with my kind before - surely you’ve learned the dangers of talking deals with us.  Besides…”

Smirking knowingly, 007 patiently waited for the catch he knew was coming.

“...I’m going to need your help for the next step anyway,” Q finished before pulling his tail back in and primly pulling a handkerchief from where it had been hiding in a pocket.  He wrapped it around his tail to stem the bleeding, only the pursing of his lips giving away the price in discomfort he’d paid to make this design - and quite a design it was.  James rather wondered if demons had more blood in them than humans did, for purely this purpose, because to make a design like this would have left a regular person lightheaded.  Q, however, was still moving with fluid focus, and only lost his composure briefly as he turned to look at James and noticed his rapt interest in the arrangement of circles and vectors on the floor.  The Quartermaster came dangerously close to blushing.  “Really, 007, this is hardly even a complicated pentagram.  Nothing to stare at.  Now come on - you have to step in for this to work.”  That got the 00-agent to stop admiring Q’s work, and snap his eyes up to Q’s instead, at which point the Demon of MI6 smiled a slow, Cheshire smile.  “Unless you’re frightened?” Q challenged lightly.  

“Fear is what keeps many 00-agents alive,” James reminded.

“Ah, but not you,” was Q’s canny response, and his smile became suddenly genuinely warm.  Bandaged tail settling into a coil that circumscribed his body twice, just skimming the floor, Q made a beckoning gesture with both hands and belatedly deigned to explain, “I’m just going to make you a bit more dangerous - or at least this bullet here more dangerous.  I admit that it’s a lot of theatrics for an admittedly small project, but that’s why I generally prefer the less theatrical nature of modern technology.  But needs must.  Come on.”

Even by James’s skewed standards, listening to a demon was insanity, to say nothing for stepping into the magical working of one.  But Bond’s curiosity had been thoroughly roused, and he also felt he knew Q well enough now to judge when he was lying and when he wasn’t - that, and James’s sense for danger had settled into a steady, watchful hum, and it was that buzz beneath his skin as much as anything else that had James stalking carefully forward.  The blood had somehow dried already beneath his shoes, settling into the floor like a tattoo of deep, rich russet, and he didn’t miss the way Q’s breath caught the second he touched the first line.  Intrigued, Bond came onwards like an imperturbable tide, and only stopped when he was a bare half-stride away.  From there, he could see that Q’s breathing had sped up perceptibly, and his usually needle-thin, oblong pupils had widened like a cat’s pupil in heavy shade.  

Q was _excited_ , and 007 felt a tingle run down his spine.  

“So, in order for demon magic of this type to work - let’s call it a ‘demon blessing’ but ignore the heavenly connotations of the second word-” Q began to explain in a hurried but professorial tone, gesturing with the hand still holding Bond’s bullet, “-There needs to be four things.  Intent, a circle, a sacrifice, and a desecration.”  Q’s eyes glinted as he tipped his head to look up at Bond coyly over the rims of his glasses.  “I have the intent - this bullet will become the most accurate bullet you have ever had.  God and his angels can bless until they turn blue in the face, but the good guys never want to kill.  You’ll have much better luck with something demonic,” Q added with prim pride, and James couldn’t help the low grin from stretching across his face.  

“And I see you have the circle,” James pressed as eagerness built like a storm in his limbs.  This was a new kind of danger he’d never faced before, a danger that he didn’t think would kill him, but was by no means safe - a rare kind of fire that would heat his blood but wouldn’t burn.  

“ _And_ the sacrifice - there’s a reason I went through that whole messy business with the blood,” Q waved that off with his free hand, frowning at his bandaged tail in brief regret before dismissing that, too.  His gaze, when he turned back to Bond, was starting to get heated, enlivened in a way that was usually foreign to the unflappable, collected Quartermaster of MI6.  This was Q with a bit of Hellfire awakened in his bones.  

And Bond wanted a taste of it.  

“Most all works of magic, demonic or otherwise, involve those three things in various forms, but it’s only with demon magic that you must desecrate something to make it all work,” Q explained, easing closer, his voice turning suddenly soft and breathy.  James watched as Q slowly lifted his empty hand, as it touched Bond’s breast-pocket, then splayed past his suit-jacket, against his chest, warmth searing through his shirt.  Eyes on James’s mouth and head cocked like a thoughtful little bird of prey, Q kept murmuring, “There are a plethora of ways to interpret that last step, but I definitely prefer to be desecrated in a _particular_ way, and I hear that you’re rather good at that.”

Bond’s breath caught, and he imagined he could feel a bit of that Hellfire in _his_ blood now, a contagion that Q had spread as flagrantly as any minor plague he’d tossed about MI6.  Daring to move, Bond lifted a hand, pausing for just a moment with his hand hovering before letting it fall on Q’s arm.  The touch started professional - a grip traded between colleagues - but then Bond squeezed, massaging muscles beneath his grip and sliding upwards until he had the side of Q’s neck cupped in his palm.  

Even while blatantly leaning into Bond’s hand, Q’s expression became haughty, enough to make Bond growl low in his throat.  Q responded with an arch look down his nose, “Dear me, 007, if this is what you think of as desecration, we’re going to be here all night.”

The challenge was a spark to ignite a conflagration.  Bond surged forward, using his hold on Q’s neck to pull him into a punishing kiss full of hot breath and teeth.  Still keeping one hand clenched determinedly around the bullet, Q’s other hand immediately clutched at Bond’s gun harness to hang on, and he met the kiss fully, mouth hot and willing.  

Bond had heard of consecrated earth, where the religious and the holy were laid to rest.  Now, as Bond prepared to _desecrate_ this concrete earth deep in the belly of MI6, he pushed Q to the floor, barely cushioning both of their falls even as Q’s fingers dug into his skin through his shirt, hard enough to bruise.  “Too many clothes,” Q gasped, managing to sound put-out and impatient even as he panted and began to squirm.  James answered with a knee pressed up snug between Q’s legs and hands that put all their skill to good use, pushing up Q’s sweater and going at the button-down underneath.  Q returned the favor, a bit slower, as he was still working one-handed with that bullet clenched in his left fist.  As soon as Bond got Q’s sweater off and his shirt half-unbuttoned, he reared back himself, enough to shirk his jacket and harness, and pick up where Q’s hand had left off.  The clothing that was swiftly discarded became the closest thing to a soft bed they were going to have, a rough nest upon a concrete floor, decorated all around by red lines that seemed to glint perpetually - like watching eyes - at the corner of Bond’s vision.  The feeling of openness and yet emptiness all around them added a level of adrenalin, because anyone could walk in right now, and see MI6’s best agent desecrating their Quartermaster with all the fervor of an animal, wild and hungry.  

But Q was hungry, too, and after wriggling out of his shirt he pushed himself up to catch 007’s mouth, dragging teeth across his lip and hanging on to his shoulders.  James moaned into the kiss, stymied for a moment by the sleeves of his button-down still tangled at his wrists; for a moment, Q almost toppled him over, until Bond got loose and braced one hand on the floor and wrapped the other around Q’s nape.  Q’s hiss was almost catlike as 007 clenched his fingers in Q’s dark hair, arching his head back, but then applying his mouth to Q’s neck with enough skill to turn the hiss into a purr.  Q’s legs, thrown over hips now, tightened around his waist even as James slowly and inexorably pressed Q to the floor again, a power-play that had energy crackling in the air.  “Is this what you want?” Bond rasped against Q’s jawline, nipping it with his teeth.

Q fumbled at Bond’s belt with his right hand, his own hips seeking friction.  “No,” he startled Bond by gasping out at first, but then Q angled his head, biting the lobe of Bond’s ear hard enough to nearly draw blood before soothing it with a rough kiss and adding, “This is what I _need_.”

Urged on by the raw heat of Q’s voice, 007 made quick work of Q’s trousers, undoing the button and zip in an almost elegant movement before hooking his fingers in the waistband and dragging it unceremoniously downwards.  With Q wriggling helpfully (and more than a bit impatiently) on their discarded clothing, 007 soon had at least one of them naked, and just drank in the sight for a moment.  Q wasn’t muscled like a trained 00-agent - far from it - but he was built like a young greyhound, no fat on him and all lean lines and long limbs.  He looked perfectly human save for the sleek coil of his tail, which extended from underneath him and lashed around them as if it had a mind of its own; Bond found he liked the sound of its slither, the slide of skin and trailing bandages at the tip.  

Stretching his arms up over his head, languorous on the haphazard bed they’d made, Q lifted a foot to press his heel against Bond’s groin in something between a threat and a tease.  “I’d suggest you stop staring at my cock and do something with it - and preferably with yours, too,” he remarked, and his attempt at an airy tone was only slightly ruined by the husky quality his voice had developed.  

Groaning and drowning for a moment in the sensation of the pressure against his cock, Bond obediently rocked back on his heels, freeing up room to undo his own zip, making the motions slow, just to see Q’s eyes light up with delight and his cock bob above his flat stomach.  007 was about to die of eagerness himself, however, so after a bit of play and a cocky grin, he wrestled out of the rest of his clothing with all speed - the faster to get back to Q.  It felt like returning to a home he’d never known, to drop his weight back down over that pale body and kiss the breath out of it, pushing his tongue past Q’s lips and indeed feeling the delicate prick of sharpened canines.  The demon under him rocked and moaned as their groins met, cocks beginning to slick one another with each pass of precum, and when Q tipped his head back in growing ecstasy, Bond sucked a wicked love-mark onto the column of Q’s throat.  He knew that demons healed faster than humans - the more powerful, the quicker - but still backed off just long enough to watch the bruise fade, the razor parts of his mind that never dulled counting the mere seconds it took.  Q was selling himself short, it seemed, when he called himself weak.

Then, of course, the agent forced Q’s head back further to suck an even harder mark right up under Q’s jaw, where his pulse throbbed, until he won himself a pleasant keen.  

They didn’t have lube, but eagerness had edged into desperation, an addict’s craving for that perfect high.  James was torn between the desire to bury himself in Q’s body and the logical knowledge that unlubricated sex wasn’t generally advisable between two men.  As if seeing 007 holding back, however, Q suddenly grabbed his head between both hands (left hand still keeping a bullet trapped between his palm and his last two fingers, pressed over Bond’s temple like a parody of a threat - a bullet with no gun, aimed at his head), drawing them eye-to-eye.  Q’s gaze was as sharp and intense as a heated scalpel, and the alarm bells in Bond’s head rose to a ringing shriek - of course, they’d been clamoring at him this whole time, so he just continued to ignore them even as adrenaline surged through his system.  His cock jumped obscenely between them, too, smearing a trail from Q’s groin up to his navel.  

“007,” Q said, frowning and as serious as an incoming hurricane - and almost seeming a bit furious, too, “if I wanted gentle, _I would have asked for it_.  Understood?”  He blinked, eyes flashing behind his glasses.

Feeling Q’s tail looping lazily over his ankles, enough living rope to hang him twice over, James grinned.  

“Understood.”

With nothing but spit and precum to ease the way, Bond worked Q open.  It was like opening a present, watching Q unravel, feeling the omnipresent weight of all of MI6 above them - unawares, even as Q’s cries became louder.  Q was a demon, which meant a lot of things besides an inhuman body that could take more damage, and in Q’s case, it seemed to come with the ability - and desire - to ride that dangerous knife’s-edge between pleasure and pain.  Perhaps he did it now because he’d figured Bond out, had learned that of all the people in MI6, of all the people he’d _met_ , no one was quite as capable of holding him to that knife’s edge until his blood _sang_ with it.  Q sucked on Bond’s fingers greedily even as they pressed deeply into his mouth, testing his gag reflex, stroking his tongue, and the torment just made Q arch and groan (even though they both knew that Q could have bitten instead with his wicked little teeth).  When those slick fingers pushed into him, the friction barely cut by the saliva that had strung out of Q’s panting mouth, the dark-haired demon bared his teeth in what started as a snarl but ended as an open-mouthed, drunk-looking sigh.  

Q’s free hand stroked up and down Bond’s arm where it was braced by his side, a nonverbal encouragement that started almost gentle but got wilder as Bond found the point inside Q’s body that he wanted, crooking his fingers and pressing.  Chuckling low and deep in his throat, Bond soaked up Q’s wild cry, and pressed his mouth down to Q’s sternum, where he could all but feel the thrash of the other man’s - demon’s - heart against his lips.  The muscles in Bond’s shoulders jumped as Q’s ecstasy and impatience combined in the form of clawing hands, and James had to look to check that Q hadn’t grown actual talons.  He hadn’t, but he was leaving marks nonetheless.    

“Too rough?” Q panted, and when 007 looked back at him, Q’s hair was in his eyes, tossed about the rims of his glasses, and his smile was bright and feral.

Leaning down close to that mouth - knowing to pull back at the last second as Q nipped at him, all kitten-sharp canines and even, white incisors - Bond smiled his own devilish smile back and rumbled, “I don’t dish out what I can’t take,” and then pushed a third finger into Q’s arse.  

Q’s resulting cry seemed to crackle in the air, as if the designs all around them were fighting over it, but all Bond could think about was the beautiful way Q’s body tried to bend itself in half, and the way those deceptively human fingernails dug into his shoulders until heat seemed to spring from every point.  007 knew pain - any 00-agent did - and usually he avoided it, but this was the kind of pain he’d live through, and like fire, he had an insatiable and probably rather insane urge to glut himself on whatever didn’t kill him.  So instead of pushing Q back and shaking loose of his stinging grip, Bond pulled him closer, bodily pulling Q to him even as he sat back.  Kneeling on their rough bed of discarded clothes and weaponry, James seated Q on his lap, replacing his fingers at long last with his cock and wondering if he could go blind from the tightness, heat, and utter pleasure of it.   

For a moment, as the wave of mindless ecstasy backed off to allow in real thoughts, 007 couldn’t stop himself from laughing.  

Q’s head had been thrown back, chest heaving as he caught his  breath and adjusted to the girth of Bond’s cock in him.  His eyes were hooded and still hazy with lust as he lowered his head and looked at Bond, arching one brow and asking with honeyed slowness, “Something funny, 007?”

Bond reigned in his mirth but not his glee as he met Q’s gaze and purposefully shifted, just to watch Q’s eyes fluttered shut and his lips part as the movement rubbed him to his core.  “I was just thinking,” Bond said huskily, leaning forward to rasp his stubbled jaw against the soft skin between Q’s neck and shoulder, “that this is going to be _hell_ on my knees.”

Immediately, Q’s smile returned and threatened to split his face in pure delight.  “I promise you, I’m hell on my knees, too, but perhaps another time?” he somehow managed to mix professionalism with seduction in one fell swoop, and James suddenly wondered how he’d lived without a demon in his life.  

Bond’s first upward surge elicited a low, groaning cry from them both, the friction almost too much to take and nowhere near enough all at once.  Craving more and hearing Q pant, “Don’t stop now, you bastard,” in his ear, James repeated the motion, hips rolling and nerve endings singing at the feeling of Q all around him.  He knew that his hands were wrapped around Q’s ribcage tight enough to bruise, but it was only fair, as Q’s hands had taken up residence on his back - and even with the bullet still doggedly held in one grip, Q was doing an effective job of raking lines across Bond’s shoulder-blade as the stimulation began to take him apart.  It was like holding something wild in his arms, something beyond his ken and yet in his control, as he began to thrust faster and harder into the yielding body that clung and clawed at him.  Like Q had said, this wasn’t gentle, and this wasn’t meant as a consecration; this was a brutal song whipped into a beautiful dance, and everything wrong with both of them was melding together like molten glass.  James felt hot trickles of blood begin to slip down his back, and he knew full well that he wasn’t showing his partner any mercy in return, even as a rapturous whiteness began to rise up behind his eyes… and Q gasped and keened and shuddered in his arms…

The world rolled back in, like the moors of Scotland easing into view as the morning mists retreated, mysterious and slow.  Bond and Q lay in a tumbled heap atop their own strewn clothing, like a single mess dropped from heaven.  The idea of a heavenly fall in conjunction with Q’s species nearly had Bond chuckling again, high on endorphins and still feeling the aftershocks like kisses to his nerves.  Next to him, Q made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a purr, and his long tail dragged languorously across Bond’s thighs before the demon rolled over with a groan.  Bond cast a shamelessly lascivious and smug look at Q’s abused arse, which was notably reddened beneath the shadow of his tail.  Bond was almost so intrigued by the strangeness of Q’s demon physiology - something he’d never had the pleasure of investigating without clothing in the way - that it took a moment for the 00-agent to realize that Q had sat up.  That in and of itself was hardly strange, as they both had to get dressed eventually, but as Q reached for his discarded shirt, the room’s yellowed light washed across his back.  

“Just a minor demon, are you?” Bond asked, low but teasing.  He went from staring at twin scars on Q’s back - long twists of healed flesh flanking his prominent shoulder-blades - to meeting the Q’s slit-pupiled eyes as the Quartermaster turned.  “I thought only Dukes of Hell had wings?”  Q eyed him a moment, and if James had had any self-preservation instincts to begin with, they’d been effectively silenced by good sex, so he just smiled sedately back.  

“Not just Dukes,” Q demurred, shrugging on his shirt as primly as a cat now, hiding the scars, “All of those above them have wings, too.  But I hear they’re more trouble than they’re worth, and terribly fragile.  They also make it terribly hard to blend in anywhere.”

“And the tail doesn’t?”

“ _The tail_ ,” Q repeated back, “provides excellent balance, and works quite well for strangling 00-agents who are entirely too chatty post-coital.”

Because he was trained to read people, and was the best in the business at it, James wasn’t off-put by the aloof tone for a second.  In fact, his smile grew more pleased with itself, and he didn’t hesitate to stretch out an arm and stroke the backs of his fingers down Q’s lower back, just beneath the shirt he was still shrugging into.  From the little divots just above Q’s pert arse down to the joining of tail and body, James let his fingers gently travel, and was rewarded by the sight of the Quartermaster-ly mask falling away again.  Q sat on his heels and closed his eyes, hands going still and head tipping back in a soft, contented sigh.  

“Are you always going to be this insufferable?” Q asked without opening his eyes, in a tone that said ‘insufferable’ meant something else entirely.  Something like ‘perfect.’

Bond got his pleasantly relaxed body to roll over, putting him on his belly but close enough to press a kiss to Q’s thigh.  “Always,” he promised cheerily.  

A tiny, dry smirk was playing at the corners of Q’s lips when Bond glanced up, incorrigibly charming sapphire eyes meeting grudgingly amused hazel ones.  Q’s tail flicked, and in that movement, the moment was broken and Q was businesslike again - amazingly so, as he was still sex-flushed and mostly naked.  Bond couldn’t stop his own twitch of surprise as the lazy sweep of Q’s tail looped across his back, briefly reminding him that he, too, was quite vulnerable and naked.  The beleaguered warning bells in his head chimed in that they’d been trying to tell him that all along.  “Well, here is your bullet, 007,” Q extended his left fist and finally unfolded it.  The air seemed to hiss around the bullet as it fell the short distance to Bond’s readied palm, and it seemed far warmer than should have been possible by body-heat alone.  When Bond turned it, he could just see a fiery, thin etching along its side - it looked like a heavily stylized ‘Q.’  “Demon-blessed and more ready to kill than anything you’ve probably ever had your hands on,” Q finished blithely as if talking about a spot of weather rolling in.  His tone became condescending in a way that was quite familiar by now, to any who worked with the new Quartermaster of MI6, “ _Do_ try to use it wisely, 007.  I may not look it, but this is a terribly tiring business, and I can’t go around making you new bullets like that every time you decide to shoot a cable just to watch an elevator fall.”

Sympathy wasn’t something that came quickly to James, and neither was caring, but he nonetheless looked up from studying to bullet to in turn study Q more closely.  Beneath the impressive mask of competency and stoicness that had descended on Q’s calm features, now that he looked, James did indeed detect… weariness, almost a frailty.  Q had really done quite a big favor for him, all without being asked, and the honor of that settled like something warm and ineradicable in James’s heart.  Still stretched out lazily on his stomach at Q’s side, Bond, without breaking eye contact, dipped his chin in a little nod that might have been almost a bow of respect.  “Thank you, Q,” he said.  

Q smirked, eyes narrowing with amusement, and he chose to reply wryly, “James Bond, you wouldn’t say thank you to a king if the man granted you a knighthood.”

“Maybe because I don’t care to be knighted,” Bond played back.  He wrapped his hand around the bullet he’d been given, a bullet blessed with just what an assassin-spy needed: the enduring will to kill its target.  Then his smile stretched to become more roguish, and he went on, “And besides, one knighthood between us is more than enough, isn’t it?  If you’re truly a Knight.”

Rolling hies eyes hard enough to nearly pop them out of his head, Q sighed gustily and went back to collecting and donning his clothing - and tossing the rest in the agent’s face.  “You’re going to be insufferable now, aren’t you?”

“No more so than before.”

It took James and Q a bit of time to get dressed again, and then presentable, but with a pitstop at the lower-level locker-rooms for new clothes and a quick clean-up, the two looked impeccable again by the time they rejoined the rest of their MI6 colleagues.  Q’s hair took a bit of work to straighten and Bond had to patch up his scratched back and shoulders, but they were both pros at hiding things from the world, and looking like perfection even when the world around them was chaos.  Therefore, the betting pool for whether James and Q would kill each other or fuck each other first was left none-the-wiser by the time the two men went their separate ways, everyone as ignorant as Adam and Eve before the snake sauntered in.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone needs to go visit [Springbok](http://archiveofourown.org/users/springbok7/pseuds/springbok7) right now and give her a million hugs, because she pulled off a miracle - she got another chapter beta-read in time for me to post this morning! 
> 
> I'm literally about to hit the road to visit my family - so it may be a few days before any more posting happens, but hopefully this chapter has scratched a few itches ;)


	3. Eigengrau

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hunt for Silva begins... and does not go as planned. Good thing 007 has a demon in his corner.
> 
> (When does it?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eigengrau: (n) ‘dark grey’ or ‘brain brain’; the color seen by the eye in perfect darkness
> 
> (Some of you might also notice that this is the a very pertinent word in another fic I'm currently posting... *nudge nudge to [Sciamachy](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11539368/chapters/25908843))
> 
> Q gets a bit epic in this chapter... because demons are territorial, and Q might also like Bond just a bit ;)

Bond didn’t get to use the bullet as planned, due largely to a distraction named Severine and a trio of Komodo dragons that tried to eat 007, gun, demon-blessed bullet and all.  Still, despite never having the opportunity to put Q’s magic to good use, James came out of the whole mess with his life and limbs intact, Silva in custody, and the bullet secretly tucked away in his buttoned breast-pocket.  He hadn’t gotten his hands on another gun that could shoot the bullet, but he hadn’t lost it.  

Perhaps Q knew that the bullet hadn’t been destroyed as the rest of Bond’s tech had, but the Quartermaster still cocked an eyebrow when he saw Bond return with a living Raoul Silva.  All of MI6 had heard that demons were territorial, but they didn’t really get to see it in action until Silva was marched in and straight to a high-tech holding cell, and Q bristled visibly the entire time, tail making unsettled waves behind him.  

As James and Q, along with other curious higher-ups from MI6, watched Silva being sealed away behind bullet-proof glass, Q said with almost painful politeness, “You know, I’d really have rather you shot him.”  And with that, he walked away, something of an agitated wolf in his step, this stranger in his home and halls doing terrible things to his mood.  Even Bond, with his penchant for danger and his penchant for Q in particular, wasn’t stupid enough to follow him.

~^~

And then when Silva escaped and went after M, the shit really hit the fan.  

~^~

There were sparks and the smell of smoke in the air, speaking to the battles waged within the walls of MI6.  Bond had escaped outside with the woman at the center of it all, M, and was presently poised just outside the Aston Martin with his gun in hand - a bullet already lodged in the chamber as a figure stepped out of the alleyway shadows.  

“I’d really rather you didn’t shoot me with my own bullet, 007,” the figure said with posh politeness.  

Expecting Silva, who had to be hot on their trail already, Bond relaxed and breathed out from tight lungs as he recognized Q - who looked a bit rough and singed around the edges, far more so than would be expected from a noncombatant employee like a Quartermaster.  In fact, Q’s left cheek was scraped, and there was blood seeping through a ragged tear in his right shirtsleeve, echoed by burn-marks on other parts of his clothing.  His tail, already healed from his escapade with James and the bullet (which was indeed lodged in the chamber), remained coiled close, like a weapon held in a close guard - James had only caught a glimpse, as he spirited M out of MI6, of just what a weapon Q’s deceptively human body could be.

“Quartermaster,” Bond greeted formally, holstering his gun, “I didn’t expect you to come see us off.”

“Why, because you didn’t tell anyone you were absconding with M?” Q said with a quirk of his mouth, before the smile fell away to leave grimness and tiredness behind.  “Don’t worry, 007, I was only able to follow your trail because I was the one who rebuilt the MI6 security system.”  Q paused, shifting from foot to foot, and it was possibly the most human that he had ever looked before he pursed his lips and said quietly, “You’re luring Silva away to try and fight him on your own terms, aren’t you?”

After a pause of his own, the air feeling weighted, Bond admitted, “Yes.”

“You’re liable to die on your own terms, too, you know that, right?  You and her.”

“You forget, Q,” Bond managed to flash a smile despite the solemnity that was pressing down on him.  He pulled the car-door open to slide in, “I may not heal like you do, but I’m damnably hard to kill.  And besides - I’ve got a gift from a demon in my possession.”

Q’s smile was faint and wan, but true.  A stray breeze ruffled his hair, revealing another smear of blood up near his hairline, from a cut already healed.  Wryly, Q retorted, “Demons don’t give gifts.  We make deals.  That bullet was given to you on the condition that you didn’t squander it - so bloody do your job and put Silva in the ground, would you?  He made a mess of my Branch before I finally managed to chase him out.”

Damn, but Bond wished he’d had the time to stay and watch that.  Q looked rough, but his eyes spoke of murder, and somehow Bond was sure that Silva and his allies had gotten the rudest of surprises when their route through MI6 had included more than just a bunch of helpless tech-geeks.  Q-branch was quite possibly the most dangerous quarter of MI6 now.  When M had hired Q, she’d said that his territorial demon nature would come in handy, and it looked like it had - Q had bought James enough time to get M out.  

“Can you do me one last favor, Q?” Bond asked as he slid in behind the wheel, Q coming up to the still-open door with wary interest - a savvy moth to a irresistible flame.  

Nodding ever-so-briefly to M in the back seat, Q looked immediately back to James and frowned.  “Demons don’t do favors, either.”

“A deal then,” Bond said without hesitation, flashing his most roguish grin, “You lay a trail after us - one that only Silva can follow, but one that he’ll have to work for.  A trail of breadcrumbs.”

“Done,” Q said immediately, then seemed to realize how easily he’d accepted the bargain - without even asking first for anything in return.  If it weren’t so dark out, Bond was sure he’d have seen an embarrassed flush.  Instead, Q leaned closer over the doorway, tail twitching irritably behind him.  He said in a low voice just for James, sounding impatient and almost a bit furious, “And in return, you will return in one piece and with Silva in a _casket_ , is that understood?  I didn’t bless that bullet just so you could use it on a suicide run.”

M was looking a bit perplexed and suspicious now in the backseat, but wisely held silent, and didn’t rush the two men - the man and the demon - as they locked eyes in a battle of wills, Bond grinning and Q scowling.  But in the end… Bond reached out and caught Q’s tail on a backswing, stilling its fidgeting and fingering it softly.  

“Don’t burn MI6 down before we get back, okay?” he said instead of agreeing to Q’s terms, because danger was breathing down his neck and begging to be laughed at.  

Exasperation all over his face - and maybe fondness, beneath that - Q gave up and retorted, “Your file says you always come home like some sort of zombie homing pigeon.  You hardly need me to summon you with hellfire.  Now go, before bloody Silva and his bloody quaint little army show up.”

With that, Q backed up, prim again despite his unkemptness, and James slammed the door and shifted into drive.  From the backseat, M remained silent for a few seconds, and a glance in the rearview mirror at her showed that she was looking backwards, too - at her demonic Quartermaster, silhouetted in the alley behind them.  The silver-haired woman sighed softly, and her only comment on the whole exchange between her agent and her demon was a resigned, “He _is_ going to burn down headquarters, isn’t he?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I hired Q because demons like him are wildly protective of their territory, which he defended marvelously well just now, despite overwhelming odds,” M said, still watching out the back window, even though they’d taken a turn and Q had disappeared from view, “What that amounts to, however, is that demons are possessive little bastards, and I think that if you don’t come back, Q’s going to be just as angry as if Silva had pissed on one of his laptops.  Which leads me to fear that he’ll burn down an awful lot of things.”

By the time M finished her words in her martyred tone, James was grinning like a fool, and couldn’t stop himself.  Suddenly, the game had gotten _fun_ again, all because he knew he had a stroppy demon waiting for him at home - and a demonic present in his pocket with Silva’s death on it.  “Good thing I make a hobby out of resurrection then, isn’t it?” he chortled, and gunned the engine.  

Neither of them mentioned that James had just gotten away with making an open-ended deal with a demon, and that Q had promised to help him with no promise of anything in return.

~^~

Bond had survived a demon as a child.  It had attacked Skyfall lodge and burned it to the ground, making a veritable hell on earth atop the Scottish moors.  James had survived, small and hidden amidst the rubble and smoke, and had seen something so terrifying that he’d perhaps lost his ability to be properly frightened of anything after that.  

Bond had  killed another demon as an adult.  As a rule, demons weren’t common, but when they were making mischief topside, they tended to gravitate towards seedy characters - so James’s initial mission was to overthrow a dictator, only to get a two-for-one deal with a Duke of Hell.   _No one_ was paid enough hazard pay to go toe to toe with a demon of that calibre, but by this point, James was a seasoned double-oh and had accepted the fact that his survival instincts were completely dysfunctional.  By the time MI6 realized what they’d sent their best agent into, James was already returning home, a lot worse for wear but with nothing but smoke and a dead demon behind him.  The reputation of James Bond had swelled even as he excelled in other skills and made kills that had nothing to do with the supernatural.

And as of a week ago, Bond had had sex with a demon too, who was definitely at the top of his short list of favorites.  Now the 00-agent carried a demon-blessed bullet in his clip like fire in his hands, and half of him wished that his last sight of Q hadn’t been under such tense circumstances, because Q at his most demonic was sexy as hell.  James was logically aware that he should have been a bit intimidated by Q - whose physical size wasn’t intimidating, but shells could be deceiving - but it was already a foregone conclusion that James wasn’t properly scared by anything, not even higher demons.  

And Silva was no demon.  Dangerous, but no demon.

There was something twisted, almost prophetic, about luring Silva out to the shell that had once been Skyfall.  Some of it was still standing - good stone didn’t burn, although it did scorch, if the Hellfire was hot enough - and James had made a few calls before ditching his mobile, ensuring that he’d be well supplied by the time he and M arrived.  M was less than pleased about holing up in a blackened shell of a building.

She’d been even less pleased when he’d told her that she’d be better off holing up in the _hole_ under that blackened shell of a building.  It would be a pity to let such a good escape tunnel go to waste, and if James had survived down there while a Duke of Hell attacked, then surely his employer could stay alive down there while one obsessed supervillain came calling.

That obsessed supervillain came calling with a whole pack of madmen behind him, but James had had the advantage of preparation time, and he was ready for the lot of them.  He didn’t exactly have Q’s technological expertise, or Q’s demonic ability to loose small plagues upon a place, but James could be a veritable pox upon his enemies, and the booby-traps he laid down took out first the helicopter and then a goodly portion of Silva’s men.  All the while, Bond’s Walther sat holstered beneath his arm, Q’s bullet loaded and waiting while the agent used higher caliber weapons to snipe off a few more men.  This was what 00-agents lived for, and it was soon clear that Silva’s comrades just didn’t measure up.

Silva was another story.  

Playing a game of cat-and-mouse across the moors should have ended faster, with a bullet between someone’s shoulder-blades, but instead it culminated with James and Silva facing each other coldly across a frozen pond.  They probably both looked a lot like monsters - nothing demonic about them, but dust and soot and the debris from the destruction they'd wrought all over them, breath pluming like smoke in the cold.  Silva’s monologuing and ranting about M’s having abandoned him would have annoyed Bond all on its own, but what lit a furious fire in James’s guts was that he himself had run out of auxiliary weapons, and now had only one: his Walther, with the bullet Q had asked him not to waste.  

He pulled the trigger down into the ice, silently apologizing to Q as the surface beneath his feet and Silva’s shattered.  Bond had other bullets left, but even if the dip into the water didn’t ruin them, Q’s bullet had just been used to ‘kill’ a load of ice.  At least it did the job, and soon James and Silva were tangling underwater, the icy coldness threatening to crush the air out of them.  James snarled out the last of his breath in rising bubbles of frustration when he felt Silva - whose throat he’d just managed to find in the murky, chill dark - jerk free of him and kick towards the surface.

It wasn’t until James dragged himself up onto the bank as well, coughing up pond-water and gasping for air, that he realized his Walther was missing.  There were two silhouettes racing towards the old chapel, which had survived the first Battle of Skyfall Lodge, and James halted his coughing long enough to swear as he realized M had left the relative safety of the tunnel.  Fear clutching his heart as it hadn’t before - because, after all, James risked his life all the time, but knew that not everyone else had such a cordial relation with Death - James picked his sodden self up and started running as well.  

By the time he made it inside, Silva was already fiendishly grinning from the front of the chapel - M pulled up tight in front of him.

The real insult?  It was James’s Walther - now in Silva’s hand - that the grinning madman was holding up to M’s head.  At M’s other temple, Silva had snuggled up close, so that they were cheek to cheek.  

“I didn’t realize that murder-suicide was your style, Silva,” James opined cagily, his mind rapidly grasping for options.  “If that gun’s still working after its dip in the pond, it’ll put a hole in your skull as quickly as hers.”

Silva didn’t back off, instead grinning wider, until it looked like his face would split pleasantly in half.  “Seeing as it’s _your_ gun,” Silva had to drive that home, and James kept from flinching but couldn’t stop the angry clenching of his jaw, “I imagine it’ll do its job - and all that really matters is that Mother dearest goes to sleep before I rest.”  M hissed and jerked as Silva ground the gun’s barrel more firmly against the side of her skull.  Silva’s free arm around her middle was inescapable, though; James knew the other man’s power from having tangled with him.  “Your clever Quartermaster does good work, I hear,” Silva chose to add.

James saw an opening - or at least an opportunity to stall.  He purposefully relaxed his stance and saw Silva’s grin fractionally freeze in response.  

“The best,” James replied conversationally, “In fact, I’m surprised he didn’t kill you.”

The little sting did its job; Silva’s pride responded like a flash of heat when rain hits a sullen fire.  “I think you’ve got that rather turned around, James.”

“Oh no,” James assured.  He was pacing quietly now, not getting any closer, but seeking a better angle.  He was out of guns, but he still had knives, and if he could get the timing and the trajectory right, just maybe he could do some damage before Silva did.  “Q may not be agent material, but he’s got a temper, and a hatred for trespassers.  You noticed that he’s a demon, of course?”

Silva loved to monologue and to gloat, but he was getting annoyed with James’s easy prattling, that much was clear by the smile that had become a scowl.  He looked like an ill-tempered child sheltering behind his mother - an analogy that honestly turned James’s stomach.  “I’m giving you time to say goodbye to your master, James, and yet you insist on rambling about your Quartermaster.  One would think you were lovers.”

James couldn’t help it: he paused and leered with incorrigible pride.  He teased shamelessly, “The only reason we’re alive is because you’re right.  Tell me, Silva, have you ever had the balls to fuck a demon, or do you only haunt people on the internet and attack old women?”

By the brief, downward twitch of M’s eyebrows, James was going to pay for the ‘old women’ comment if they all survived this.  The reaction from Silva was far better, though, and nearly instantaneous as 007’s insufferable nature finally poked through the other man’s inflated ego.  From the beginning of all of this, James had been building a sense of the man, and by now was sure that Silva was quite the exhibitionist - everything was a show, and James was ruining it by not tearing up, pleading for M’s life, or just generally playing along.  The Walther left M’s head and aimed at James instead.

“There’s more than one bullet in here,” Silva warned, that smile starting to crawl back into place, looking more manic by the second.  James had frozen in place, and Silva mistook 007 reevaluating the situation for fear and chuckled, “Oh, come now, James, surely you didn’t think I’d have to choose between finishing you off and ending the woman I’ve loved and hated for so long.”  Silva’s expression became a snarl, and James realized that he might have miscalculated.  “You’ve been kind enough to leave me more than ample ammo to end all of this - and all of _us_.”  There wasn’t enough room, wasn’t enough time; Silva couldn’t miss at this distance, but James also couldn’t lunge forward to stop him.  Bond’s slow circling had taken him away from the cover the old, dusty pews provided.  “Say goodbye, James - but just for now.  I’m sure we’ll all be seeing you on the other side.  Who knows, maybe that hellish little lover of yours will be granted visitation rights?”

Even as James leaped to the side, he knew that it was too late.  The bark of the Walther firing echoed off the walls, and James heard M shout his name.  Diving, James could see - as if in slow-motion, years of experience at play behind his eyes - that Silva had anticipated him, changing the angle to make up for the movement and still aim for the heart.  Even if Silva was off by a bit, the bullet would hit James’s center of mass for sure, so in those split-seconds, 007 braced himself.  

The pain never came.  

When James looked back upon this moment, he would know with absolute certainty that the bullet should have hit him.  The glint of the gun’s muzzle, the angle of Silva’s arm - all combined to create a picture of lethal aim.  Nonetheless, the only pain James felt was in hitting the stone floor and rolling, while his ears picked up the small _ping_ of the bullet hitting stone.  Ricocheting.  

M made another noise of shock, and James twisted onto his hands and knees, a horrific premonition of sorts coming before his mind’s eye: M, incidentally stuck by the bullet meant for James.  That was just ridiculous, however, because ricochets - while common enough in gunfights - were governed by pure chance, and bullets often lost a lot of their power when they deflected off things.  And, indeed, when James’s eyes found his boss, she was unharmed.  

But Silva, standing stock-still behind her, was looking at James through only one eye.  The other seemed to smoke blackly, with a core of heat hidden deep within the socket like a coal buried where Silva’s left eye should have been.  Ricocheting bullets lost a lot of their momentum, but there were few places in the body as vulnerable as the eyes, or as vital.  

Silva’s mouth opened as if he’d say something, but then he dropped James’s Walther and his grip around M’s waist weakened, and finally the man dropped to the ground like a felled tree.  

For a long moment, James and M just stared, the only thing breaking the quiet being their quickened breathing and the occasional patter of pond-water from James’s still-sodden clothing.  Then M looked between Silva’s still-smoking eye-socket and James’s still-empty hands before snapping with just a touch of hysteria herself, “Bond, what the _hell_ just happened?”

Having his suspicions but not wanting to speak until they were confirmed, James pushed himself to his feet with a grunt and approached the corpse of Raoul Silva.  He remained on edge until he got close enough to check that it was indeed a corpse - not an ounce of life left in it - and then sagged with relief, feeling all of this evening’s fighting and all of these last days’ running like lead in his bones.  Silva was gone.  The maniac was still smiling, a quizzical rictus grin, as if he’d realized in the last second that a vainglorious end was all he’d ever really wanted.  James grimaced back, and turned his attention to the ruined mess of Silva’s left eye, which wasn't even bleeding, having been grossly cauterized.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” James exclaimed softly as he looked and just barely saw, glinting from two inches deep in Silva’s skull, something that might have been a mangled, glowing letter ‘Q.’  A beat later and James realized the irony of his last sentence.  Damned indeed - and grateful for it.  Q’s bullet hadn’t been lost to the icy pond at all, even though James could have sworn it was the next one up in the clip.  The bullet’s fading, hellish glow seemed to wink between wisps of smoke.  

“James?” M prompted, growing tense in the silence.  

She’d had quite a roller-coaster ride the past few days, and Bond belatedly realized that this was probably the most unsettled he’d ever heard her - so he looked up, cobbled together a fatigued but reassuringly roguish smile, and replied, “It would seem that Q and his gadgets are just full of surprises.”

Either the smile or the minimalistic explanation was enough to relax M, because something in her eyes and posture eased.  She even cocked one eyebrow and asked back wryly, “This has to do with what you and Q were talking about back in London, doesn’t it?”

“He might have given me something that was made to kill megalomaniacs like Silva.”

“You took your damn time using it.”

“Next time, I’ll lead with the demon-blessed bullet,” James joked back good-naturedly and stood.  He even dared to put an arm around M’s shoulders, because even though he was sure to get her soaking wet this way, they both looked on the verge of falling over.  M didn’t shake him off, so the two of them tottered with the fragile grace of drunks back to where James hoped to find a car still in working order.  It was time to go home.

~^~

James was leading M through the carnage around Skyfall, dawn coming but the night still hiding everything; a heavy mist had tamped down the remaining fires.  M and James had indulged in a few hysterical bursts of laughter as their impossible survival sank in, and their luck continued to hold as James saw the Aston Martin, looking more or less intact and perhaps even driveable.  Idle, celebratory James Bond became tense and ready 007 in a split second, however, as a sudden beeping noise startled them both.  Bond already had a knife in one hand and M pushed behind him with the other before he realized he was hearing a phone ringing, where it had fallen out of the pocket of a nearby corpse.  

Wary but curious, James watched it for a moment as it kept ringing, then stepped towards it.  M called his name again, slight warning in her tone, but while curiosity killed cats, it hadn’t managed to finish 007 off yet.  He bent and plucked up the phone, flicking it open after recognizing the number.  “Yes?” he asked with a growing smile.  

“Ah, James, good to hear that you’re still alive,” Q’s briskly polite tones came through the speaker as if this were just any old mission.  “I was half worried that I’d find myself talking with one of Silva’s lackeys.”

“No, you weren’t,” James accused, still smirking with utmost glee.  M had walked around and was looking at him with something between sensible caution and actual worry - letting James know that his devil-may-care tone and his smile were a bit worrisome without context.  

“No, I wasn’t,” admitted Q with something that might have been fondness.  The Quartermaster added, after the faintest of thoughtful pauses, his tone more oblique and offhand, “Did you know that a demon can tell when his work sends someone on their way to Hell?”

James found himself chuckling lowly.  “That explains how you knew Silva got the short end of the deal, but doesn’t explain how you got this number.  Have you been having fun without me, working your magic just to find a phone number?” he kept up the joke, putting just enough innuendo into his tone to _clearly_ bring to mind the last bit of ‘fun’ he and Q had had, naked beneath MI6 proper.  

Q muttered on the other end, “Show a man one demonic ritual and it’s all he can think about.”  No longer _sotto voce_ , Q continued, “You do know, 007, that I was hired for more than just my supernatural skills?”

M’s expression had gone through a number of transmutations as James had talked, but something between the wicked smile and the more wicked tone of innuendo must have clued her in.  “Is that Q?” she said, somehow managing to managing to sound surprised and jadedly resigned all at once.  It made no sense that Q could have called them here, but of course he had.  

Chuckling outright now, James gave in with a nod, elaborating with a warmer tone than he’d had occasion to use since… well, probably since he’d just finished fucking Q.  “Yes, he somehow managed to track down this number just to check in on us - and probably show off a bit.”

“I am _not_ showing off,” Q huffed.  His temper softened quickly, however, and he sounded more dryly resigned to 007’s antics by the time he went on, “Hand the phone to M, 007, as I’m sure she’s more skilled at giving reports that you are.”

Even though Q couldn’t see him, James put on an affronted expression, his voice matching.  “Q, I’m hurt.”

“James, have you _read_ your own mission reports?”

“Touche.”  Giving in, and also feeling as though everything were right with the world now that Silva was dead and Q was in his ear, Bond handed off the phone to M.  He ambled along next to her, alert (and also eavesdropping) as M did indeed relay all that had occurred - from the boring drive to the ‘old women’ comment to the surprisingly accommodating bullet…

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still in the Motherland, so I don't know if I'll get internet for a bit - at least, until I get back home August 6th :) So you might have to wait until then for the last chapter, but I'll post sooner if at all possible!


	4. Recherché

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Q met them, not surprisingly, at a crossroads._
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> James and M are in for a bit of a tumultuous home-coming - but at least Q is there to meet them. It keeps things interesting...
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> Or the chapter in which both James and Q are the most deadly men in the room, and they get along like a house on fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Recherché: (adj.) carefully chosen, rare, or exotic. (And Bond and Q have definitely chosen each other, yes? <3 )
> 
> IT IS FINISHED! *dances gleefully around my own demonic fire* *then hugs my beta, because Springbok made this all possible*

Q met them, not surprisingly, at a crossroads.  

“First you claim you’re a Knight, and now you’re masquerading as a lowly Crossroads-demon?” James couldn’t help but tease as he rolled the car to a stop, leaning out the window to grin at the cardigan-wearing demon blocking the way.  They were still in rural territory, the city a looming presence beyond, and Q looked rather out of place with his scholarly glasses and professional clothing.  

“Firstly,” Q raised a finger, tail giving a little flick out behind him, “I’m not _claiming_ to be anything - I am a Knight.”  But he was smirking, a small and secretive slant of his expressive mouth.  “And secondly, I figured that the head of MI6 - and her faithful hound-”  Q sketched a little bow towards Bond, who huffed and rolled his eyes.  “-Would want a little forewarning before making a triumphal return.  Things have progressed a bit since we talked over the phone, and someone-”  Again, Q’s eyes cut to Bond, this time significantly and with a faint irked light.  “-Never picked up another phone.  So I had to resort to more archaic means of getting in touch.”

“I was worried that if I got another mobile, it would get hacked,” Bond defended with a careless shrug.  Behind him in the car, he heard M heave a put-upon sigh.  “You just can’t predict what those crazy hackers will do.”

Q’s smile had an edge to it now that promised a lot of pain for Bond later, but that only made the agent grin - leer, really - more broadly.  Instead of responding to the dig against Q’s inexplicable ability to nose his way into phones he shouldn’t have even been aware existed, Q angled his head to look past Bond, to where M sat in the passenger seat.  Q indicated the back passenger door.  “May I get in?  I’ve burnt myself out a little, and don’t fancy hitchhiking back into the city - and I also don’t think it’s optimal for me to give my report from out here, while you hold up traffic.”  

“Let’s hear it then, come on,” M agreed in a tone that spoke volumes about how Bond and Q’s chatter exasperated her.  She also jerked her chin to the back seat, however, and otherwise seemed to resign herself to the fact that Bond and Q would banter until Hell froze over (at which point Q would probably ask politely if James wanted to come keep him warm at night).  

Q slipped into the car and James - with a glance at Q, who nodded - put them back into drive, heading towards the city as if they hadn’t just picked up a demon at a crossroads.  Q spent just a moment getting situated, buckling himself in and arranging his long tale scrupulously about him.  That done, however, he grew professional again, leaning forward with elbows on knees, steepled fingers.  “After you left, higher powers decided that there was a need to take control of MI6 - well, they said ‘need,’ but I rather think they meant ‘opportunity.’  Regardless, everyone claimed that the two of you were either traitors to the Crown or dead.”  Q’s mouth tipped down at the corners, a small but significant sign of how much he disapproved of the allegations.  Still, he went on as lightly as before in a beat, “It was all very legal and kosher, but when my efforts to disprove both those theories fell on deaf ears, I decided that it might be best to halt the proceedings until you both could return and rectify the situation personally.”

Listening with keen but narrowed grey eyes, M turned in her seat to regard her Quartermaster warily.  The demon merely met her gaze with his slit-pupiled eyes, mild as a mayflower, even while James kept his eyes on the road with his lingering (and perhaps broadening) grin reflected in the rearview mirror.  “And how exactly did you accomplish that?” M asked slowly, “I assume you were successful.”

“I was,” Q said, and now his lips twitched upwards.  He sat back, looking pleased with himself, “I locked down the MI6 computers.  Now I’m the only one who can get into them, and considering just how much of the world is computerized these days, it got everyone’s attention pretty quickly.”

“Which begs the question - why are they letting you wander around freely?” M was more than shrewd enough to ask.  

Q’s smile was slight but Cheshire.  “They actually threatened to lock me in a holding cell.”

Now James couldn’t help but chime in.  “Emphasis on ‘threatened,’ I take it?”

Q’s smile broadened until his eyes were veritably dancing behind his glasses.  “Well, _making_ a threat and carrying it out are two very different things.  And those tunnels where my branch is set up actually have some paths that constitute crossroads - so, for me, making a quick and relatively secret exit wasn’t impossible.”  Only then did Q sag, arms draped across his lap and eyes looking suddenly shadowed as he added, “Difficult and exhausting, but not impossible.  And definitely worth it.”  Q raised a finger to make the point before any sympathy or compassionate gratitude could be voiced, finishing, “There was a bit too much _in absentia_ head-hunting for my liking.”

“Never did I think I’d see the day where a demon was the paladin for fairplay,” M murmured to herself, then looked back at Q more evenly and just barely inclined her head.  “Thank you, Q.”  Turning forward again, sitting primly once more and looking over to her 00-agent chauffeur, M added succinctly, “Wipe that grin off your face, 007.  We’re not going to be walking into a party when we get there, and I expect that it’ll be a miracle if we get back into MI6 without someone being arrested.”

Bond just chuckled and disobeyed the order, still smirking as he replied, “Why, that sounds like _exactly_ my kind of party,” and depressed the pedal a little more, the car responding with a throaty growl, Q with an agreeing hum in the backseat.  

~^~

“Oh shit,” Q sighed when they got close to the MI6 building and saw the police presence all around it like a cloud of hornets around a rattled nest.  He leaned forward against his seatbelt, between the two front seats, to get a better look at things, although that hardly made the view any better.  “This is a mite worse than when I left, I’m afraid.”

“We can handle it,” James assured, and while M gave him a look that said she didn’t entirely share his bravado, no one argued as James stopped the car at the first rank of detaining officers.  All compliance, James got out first, and felt a little unexpected thrill as he heard Q getting out immediately just behind him.  The crowd backed off, and it was hard to tell if it was because any of them recognized 007 or because of the way Q’s slowly undulating tail gave away the demon in their midst.  A quick glance back showed Q standing fairly nonchalantly in his open Anorak, hands in pockets, the only truly terrifying thing about him being that he was such a dangerously nonhuman thing in such an unassuming human package.  James liked that sense of danger at his back, knowing to the marrow of his bones that it was an ally.  

Swinging his focus back to the armed officers standing very uneasily now in front of him, Bond mimicked Q’s hands-in-pockets pose.  With his own jacket buttoned, his gun harness remained hidden.  It was a bit of a novelty to be the hidden ace in this scenario, as he saw the way everyone’s eyes looked at him and Q, and immediately dismissed James as comparatively nonlethal.  That thought alone made a wintry but pleased smile cut across Bond’s mouth before he requested, “I’d like to speak to whomever is in charge, please.”  

“This is a secure area.  Only authorized personnel can continue, sir, you’ll have to turn around,” was the tense, regimented answer.  

James decided to pretend he didn’t hear it, as opposed to getting angry.  So he simply continued, “Sooner rather than later would be nice.  Chop-chop now.”  When the man in front of him - who was armed, and in fact starting to raise his rifle as Bond’s attitude rankled him and Q’s demonic heritage scared him - started to open his mouth to snap something back, James’s smile spread and he added, “Or do you want to be the one responsible for keeping a 00-agent and the Quartermaster waiting?  Not to mention the head of MI6.”  Smile never reaching his frost-blue eyes, James removed one hand from his pocket to lazily indicate the car and its passenger, ignored up until now.  En route, James’s hand also happened to undo his jacket buttons, the material falling back to show him armed in accordance with all agents with a licence to kill.  The anxiety level immediately rose to a metaphorical screaming pitch, and guns snapped up.  

“Always have to put on a show, don’t you?” Q murmured under his breath, coming up to stand at Bond’s side - his left side, so as not to impede Bond’s gun-hand.  

James retorted cockily, “Says the fellow who used an actual blood-ritual with all the trimmings just to bless one bullet.”

“That was a damn good bullet and you know it,” Q shot back without any real rancor, and James noticed the way Q’s tail had curled: it was a massively long tail, and while it once again had a rag tied around it from Q cutting it recently, it had circumscribed an arc around them like a line in the sand.  Cross it and face the consequences.  James was within that circle, and felt quite proud to be included.  Besides that, he knew that a demon’s tail was their first weapon, so if the officers wanted to dance, well, James had the best dance-partner he could ask for-

“Oh, for Heaven's sake,” M’s exasperated remark followed the opening of the passenger door, shattering the tension as everyone jumped and realized that Bond and Q really weren’t the only beings in existence.  Q seemed to flinch a bit at the ‘Heaven’ reference, although that might have just been his delicate demon sensibilities being offended, rather than an actual physical reaction to the word.  “If you won’t listen to a 00-agent or the Quartermaster of MI6-” M directed at the same officer Bond had been irritating, and _now_ everyone seemed to take note of the titles: Bond was given more wary looks, and people started to realize that this was the Quartermaster they’d been assigned to locate.  M’s whipcrack tones kept everyone in line, however, with the ease of long practice, “-Then perhaps you’ll listen to the head of MI6.  Now, if you’ll kindly locate whoever is in charge of this lamentable display, I’ll call off my agent.”  M cast a rather gimlet look Q’s way, and added like she was regretting hiring a demon for the first time, “...And my Quartermaster.  The two of you are grown men and professionals, now act like it.”

While Q looked back at M with an innocently shocked expression - like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth - James just tried not to chuckle as he buttoned his jacket again and watched everyone scurry around them like ants.  “This the closest thing you could rally to a ‘Welcome Home’ parade?” he teased in a low rumble, rocking to the side to jostle Q with one shoulder.  

Q took the jostling with an arch, miffed look, but otherwise swayed with it.  His tail still cut a neat arc around them, but it looked less like a readied weapon now.  The edges of the cloth wrapped around the tip just skimmed the ground.  “Not everything in this world dances just for you, 007,” Q reminded.  

“I’d like to see you prove that,” James sallied back even as things began to sweep into motion all around them.

~^~

Q was convinced to end the lockdown on MI6.  ‘Convinced’ really meant that various officials got red in the face demanding that he do it, while Q just stood impassively doing a grand impression of deafness, all until M stepped forward and repeated the request in calm but confident tones.  Then Q did as he was told, having proven who he would and would not answer to.  The power-play didn’t exactly hurt M’s position either, and while everyone else was red-faced and embarrassed, M was perhaps starting to look a bit pleased with herself.

Following the failed bullying session over the computers (for all that Q looked like a fragile boffin, he clearly was un-bully-able), Q was remanded to a holding cell.  He had disobeyed orders from higher-ups, after all, and he didn’t even have any orders from M to hide behind - no one but Q had decided that it would be a good idea to basically hold the entire technological portion of MI6 hostage.  Meanwhile, it was also decided that _Bond_ had held _M_ hostage.  No matter how many times M told everyone that that wasn’t the case (even if it had felt a bit like a kidnapping at first), Bond was ultimately deemed a traitor, too.  Considering the ridiculousness of the allegations all around, neither the 00-agent nor the Quartermaster were particularly worried - and M managed to at least demand that both of her men be held in the same cell, with decent care.  

So while M went to metaphorically break a few noses and regain her throne, Bond and Q got to cool their heels in a holding cell.  Their parts in this adventure had ended, and it was something of a relief, actually, to be removed from the equation.  

“Well, this is all rather embarrassing,” Q said, looking out through the plexiglass that made up the front wall of their present quarters.  A guard looked at him warily, so Q plastered on a fake smile that looked absolutely mean from close up, and gave a saucy little wave.  

Bond sat back on the cot until he could rest his shoulders on the wall, getting comfortable as only a man used to rough living arrangements could.  “Considering how many various places I’ve been locked up in, this really isn’t too bad,” he mollied.

Q’s tail swished and he went from smiling and waving to absently glaring at the guard, who was starting to look distinctly uneasy.  “I didn’t mean embarrassing for us, I meant for all the idiots who are going to spend the rest of their careers getting their feet out of their mouths after today.  But yes,” Q admitted, frown becoming almost petulant, “I suppose being stuck in here is a bit inglourious in and of itself.”

“At least the company’s good.”

“Speak for yourself.”

Instead of verbally parying Q’s last comment, Bond reached out just as Q’s long tail got within reach.  He caught it more distally than the bandage, carefully to miss it, but Q still jumped a good half-foot like someone had just put an ice-cube to the small of his back.  

The Quartermaster swung around, and instead of reacting in his usually, irked way, his expression and tone spoke only of mild tiredness and caution as he said, “Please be careful with that, 007.  It’s rather more tender than when you usually play with it.”

The switch from annoyed to sincere was telling, perhaps proving that beneath the bravado and threats, Q had never really minded the literally tail-pulling in their relationship - and also trusted James enough to reveal a weakness, asking for instead of demanding consideration on James’s part.  That got Bond to immediately look up and meet cat-pupilled hazel eyes, which for the first time looked truly exhausted, shadows dark underneath them.  Bond didn’t let go of Q’s tail, but he didn’t tug on it either, instead settling his other hand gently further up, so the bandaged section rested in between, upon his lap.  Holding Q’s eyes for a moment longer, the silence between them somehow comfortable and crisp, like mountain air, Bond only looked down again to start undying the rough bandage.  “You’re pants at first-aid,” the agent informed Q frankly.  

Still standing a short distance away, standing broadside now to Bond, Q watched with unreadable eyes as his self-inflicted injury was slowly unwrapped with the kind of infinite care Bond was _not_ known for.  “I’m a demon.  I heal fast,” Q chose to answer.  

Bond grunted, unimpressed by the response.  The cut, when he saw it, was indeed starting to heal over, despite the fact that Q had probably only inflicted it hours ago; it had been shallow and clean, and about as long as Bond’s hand, parting suede skin.  James began to wrap it again, this time with practiced, measured passes of cloth to neatly cover the cut.  “There’s no reason it has to look like a four-year-old did it,” James belatedly bluffed his way through why the hell he was doing this, tidying up a bandage for a demon.  

Q, after a moment, smiled softly.  

Only once he was done did James look up again, his own gaze frank and very open for a world-renown spy as he asked lowly, “How are you feeling, Q?”

“Why?  Do I look like something the cat dragged in?” Q retorted ruefully, but the lopsided smile was still there.  

“Maybe a little bit.”

“Hmm,” Q hummed, approaching the cot and sitting down next to James.  He swished his tail to the side like it was second nature, so as not to sit on the long appendage, but he still managed to take it out of Bond’s hands almost gently.  “In that case, I feel absolutely beat.  I had only just recovered from making that bullet for you, and suddenly I’m having to pull out the demonic rituals all over again!  There’s a reason I prefer computers - much more energy-effective.  It’s no easy task to transport one’s whole body, crossroads or not.”  Sighing and sagging back against the wall just as Bond had but with more limpness involved, Q looked the least professional James had ever seen him with his clothes on.  He also looked intensely grumpy, especially as he muttered, “That’s not even mentioning the general hassle of convincing those imbeciles that just because the cat was away, that didn’t mean the mice could play.  M is the cat in that analogy, by the way.”

“I got that part,” James tried and failed to say with a straight face, even as he reached back and wedged his fingers between Q and the wall - enough to wrap his palm around the nape of Q’s neck, cradling it for a moment, then massaging it with careful squeezes.  Q’s chin immediately tipped back, eyes falling to half-mast with a groan.  “Better?” James asked guilelessly.

Q scoffed, “As if you don’t know,” but also leaned his body forward to give James more access.  Obligingly, James shifted, too, and put both of his hands to good us, quickly bringing them up to Q’s shoulders, rubbing thumbs along either side of stacked vertebrae and feeling the tight muscles like wires beneath soft skin.  

Then, in a movement that played at being nonchalant, James slid his hands lower, until he was rubbing where he knew the two scars were.  It was a gamble, and Q initially gasped, back arching and tail giving one hard lash across the floor, but then the sound evolved into a louder moan than before as Q sank into it.  Shamelessly pleased, James pressed harder, turning his hand and digging knuckles into the flesh beneath Q’s cardigan.  

“You bastard,” Q sighed without elaborating.  

Q’s tail was coiling around Bond’s ankles like a curious snake, seemingly without Q’s notice.  It was a miniature thrill, the threat of immobilization, as the bandaged length of it carefully secured 007’s shins.  “You never should have shown them to me if you didn’t want me to be an arse about it,” James informed Q, referencing the scars that harked back to wings, then leaned in a bit; the guard was still there, still watching, but Bond's words were close enough to drop like secrets into Q’s ear, despite the lack of privacy, “I’m trained to take advantage of everything I can, after all.”

“Of every weakness?” Q looked back at Bond out of the corner of his eye.  The coils around Bond’s ankles tightened, became more purposeful and conscious.  

Hesitating only a moment, Bond decided ‘Fuck it’ and leaned forward to press a kiss to the back of Q’s ear.  Just as he knew Q wasn’t going to sincerely shackle his legs, Bond wanted Q to know that the agent had no interest in shackling Q with his own secrets.  “No, I’m just trained to go after secrets,” he murmured with his lips still against Q’s hair, smiling as it reminded him of the last time he’d been this close.  Q smelled of bergamot and woodsmoke.  “A good secret will bring me running faster than lingerie,” he airily admitted with a smirk, sparing just the briefest glance up to show the guard staring.  The man’s face seemed fixed between something like horror and something like rapt awe, perhaps because he’d never seen anyone cozying up to a demon before - or perhaps because he’d never seen two entities of such inherent dangerousness in such close proximity, like two black holes teaming up.  

“Liar,” Q surprised Bond by chortling.  Drawing back enough to stare at Q’s face in profile, James saw that Q’s eyes were heavy-lidded with contentment, but his expression was otherwise sphynx-like until Q went on with a tiny smile, “I could tell you about those scars right now, and you’d still want me.”

“So sure of that, are you?”  An empty threat, true, but 00-agents lived on threats of all kinds, real or not.  

Q just hummed and nodded, and pressed his back against Bond’s hands to encourage them to keep kneading at his flesh.  “Because it’s not the secrets that you like.”

“Oh really?”

Now Q turned, looking at him squarely with those knife-sharp, beautiful eyes, those invitingly dark lashes, that expressive mouth pulled into the most enticing of smiles.  That mouth shaped words without hesitation, like they’d felt the shape of them since forever, known them as intimately as the tongue knows the teeth, “It’s the _danger_ you like.  You don’t like me because I won’t tell you whether I’m a Knight or a Duke of Hell-”  Q twisted a bit further, so he could angle himself and kiss Bond over his shoulder - a kiss that James leaned into naturally, took greedily, lingered on contentedly.  When Q broke away, it was to speak into the fraction of distance between their mouths, so softly that Bond had to strain to hear, “-You like me because you already _know_ that I’m a Duke, and therefore the deadliest thing you’ll ever be in a room with.”

Suddenly it didn’t matter that there was a guard there; it wouldn’t have mattered if the whole of MI6 was playing voyeur.  There was a roaring need in the blood that thundered in Bond’s ears, and the only way to answer it was to cup Q’s jaw and pull him in for another kiss, teeth catching Q’s lip at first then sealing their mouths together in something hungry, something wild, something perfect.  

When they drew back, Bond was panting, and Q’s pupils were blown wide enough to look very nearly human.  Glazed eyes seeing nothing but James, Q left his head cupped in Bond’s hand and had one last thing to say, “I know because I feel the same way about you.”

The two most dangerous people in any room understood one another at that point, and proceeded to languidly kiss each other until there was a polite throat-clearing from outside the cell - Bill Tanner, come to inform them that M had got everyone sorted, and they were free to go now.  

~^~

Epilogue

~^~

It had been a month since the Silva debacle, and there was once again no question that M was not only fit to lead MI6, but that the whole organization was stronger than ever.  James had just finished a three-week-long mission in which he and a few other agents had teamed up to remove the last of Silva’s cancer - both in Britain and abroad.  The other agents had returned to MI6 and checked in two days ago - James had been AWOL until today, but really, anyone who was anyone had noticed that Q had also taken time off work at that exact same time.  Only the idiots couldn't put two-and-two together.  James had had a fabulous time getting reacquainted with his favorite Quartermaster.  

Now, James was back in MI6, rolling his shoulders occasionally and narrowing his eyes at the not-unpleasant burn.  Even when they weren’t making demon-blessed bullets together, Q liked to scratch.  Now, James was entering Q’s office with less sexual thoughts in mind, letting himself in with a wary frown.  

James closed the door.  “Q… what happened to Agent 003?”

Q leaned back luxuriously in his chair, a cup of what looked like whiskey in his hand instead of  his usual tea, and tail flicking back and forth across the floor in a clear but understated sign of annoyance - very much like an oversized cat in a tiff.  His face showed nothing but thoughtful blandness, however, and his tone was perfectly mild as he watched the swirling liquid in his glass and observed, “You know how people foolishly say, ‘Well, this should be easy!’ and everything promptly goes to hell?”

“Yes.  Famous last words.”

The smile that spread across Q’s smile was all the devil’s, only it made even James shiver a bit.  Humor was lying dead behind that expression, and Q talked over it coolly, “Well, 003’s famous last words were, ‘Well, _he_ should be easy,’ and were directed rather foolishly at me.”  

Well.  That explained 003’s present condition in Medical.  Clearly one didn’t take advantage of one’s Quartermaster with impunity, even if 007 occasionally did exactly that.  

Q sipped his drink, making a quiet noise of approval even as the mouthful mellowed him perhaps a fraction.  “It would appear that our relationship has become common knowledge.  I don’t think it will be a problem, however.”  Another swallow emptied the glass, and Q frowned unhappily into it, finishing absently, “It’ll be a pity, however, if all of you 00-agents are as stupid as 003, and I end up maiming all of M’s spies just to make a point.”

Bond reached back to lock the door, and in doing a quick scan of the room saw where Q’s drink had come from: a bottle of Scotch proclaiming itself to be a Glenmorangie Signet.  Not whiskey after all, and apparently Q had a bit of a sweet-tooth.  That made Bond smile even as his wariness over the whole situation began bleeding inevitably into a low-burning excitement - a feeling precisely like a kick of alcohol burning on the way down, then warming him and waking up his nerve-endings with its heat.  “Oh, I don’t think you _maimed_ 003,” Bond mollified, striding over to pick up the bottle.  When Q imperiously held out his glass, Bond was smart enough to fill it without comment, “At least not permanently.”

“M’s going to throw a fit,” Q noted, taking another drink - this time just a sip.  Bond knew how to read a person by their alcohol consumption; if Q was drinking more slowly, his mood was cooling.  

Bond sat on the edge of Q’s desk and considered drinking a mouthful right out of the bottle, but figured that that would be a sin even graver than 003’s attempt to get fresh with their Quartermaster.  Just as he started looking around for another drinking container, however, he realized… he didn’t _want_ Q to cool down.  He took a pull directly from the bottle as if this were nothing but cheap beer, and immediately felt Q’s eyes zero in on him like sniper-sights.  Bond lowered the bottle to meet that gaze squarely, with his most roguish, crooked smile.  

Q’s tail was lashing again, occasionally knocking against his desk.  It was fully healed again, and supply dangerous.  “You’re treading on thin ice, 007,” Q warned at a menacingly low growl, “As a connoisseur of alcohol yourself, you know how much that costs.”

Arching an eyebrow, Bond gripped the neck of the bottle and held it out over the floor.  He _hoped_ this was just a bluff even as he threatened carelessly, “How much will it cost in pieces?”

“Are you trying to join 003 in the infirmary?”

“No.”

“Because this is how you do it.  You might have killed Dukes of Hell, James, but you haven’t dealt with me when I’m truly furious.  I’ll put you on your back.”

“I’ll go on my back willingly - if you promise to get on your _knees_ first,” James leaned into Q’s personal space to rumble, all challenge, no fear.  He saw the second Q’s eyes dilated, going from anger to arousal a beat before James put the bottle down with a harmless but heavy _thunk_ on Q’s desk.  Bond was reminded of Q’s sharp little demon canines when they cut his lip on the first kiss; the blood flowed, slicking the kiss, and James couldn’t be bothered to care after an initial hiss of worthwhile pain.  

It would take awhile for everyone in MI6 to realize that Q wasn’t just some random booty-call for any passing agent.  James had sex with Q became James could handle him - and he was the only one.  Demons like Q ate people whole and spat them out shredded; but people like James were hungry for that kind of danger, and if Q represented a hellish storm, then James wanted nothing more than to ride into the teeth of it.  

If people didn’t realize it already, they’d come to the conclusion that James Bond was very probably insane.  

And Q loved him that way.  

~^~

Years later, when asked about his lover from Hell, James would merely smile a secretive smile and say things like: “We get along because I stopped fighting my inner demons ages ago.  We were already friends before Q came along,” or “The world didn’t need heroes.  It needed monsters like us.”  

And after, when he was home in bed, buried to the hilt in Q’s warm body with lean thighs around his hips and Q’s tail like a living summoning circle around them, Q would ask James the same question, just for fun.  “Why do we get along?”

“To be fair, we get along like a house on fire - lots of fire and screaming.”

“Yes, but why do we?”

James would circle a finger against where their bodies were connected, and then ease that finger into Q alongside his cock, just to hear Q hiss, and to kiss the middle of Q’s throat when his pale body arched.  Bond would speak against his pulsepoint, answering at a rumble, “Because my demons play well with yours.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who read, commented, or just generally enjoyed and sent kudos - this hasn't been a long fic, but it was one of my favorites <3 I guess I just needed something a little lovely, a little demonic, and a little silly in my life. So even if I don't get time to reply to comments, thank you to everyone who came along for the ride!
> 
> Also, an absolutely lovely [fanart](http://saph0.tumblr.com/post/175582878899/demonq-inspired-by-a-truly-delicious-00q-fic-by) by Saph0 - I myself don't have Tumblr, but thankfully someone showed me that this piece existed. *shoos the nice readers to go and see the awesome artwork and enjoy it, too*

**Author's Note:**

> As always, a million thanks to my main beta and friend, [Springbok](http://archiveofourown.org/users/springbok7/pseuds/springbok7), who polished this up and made it readable! :)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[PODFIC] My Demons Play Well With Yours](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13340727) by [Loolph](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loolph/pseuds/Loolph)




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